BESIDE THE BOWERY 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Lady of Good Cheer Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Prompt Aid to the Injured 32 

Rear Court on Cherry Hill . 82 

Under the Shadow 100 

The Ink Pot 120 

A Raid in Hamilton Street . " 164 

The Sign of Death 194 

Homeless 278 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction ix 

I Ingenuity Askew i 

II A Living Wage 13 

III The Economic Value of a Husband 20 

IV A Twig Transplanted 26 

V A Song of Exorcism 38 

VI A Temporary Husband 46 

VII The Grey Dress 59 

VIII A Lost Soul 71 

IX The Lost Battle 79 

X A Cruel Dilemma 89 

XI A Domestic Crisis 95 

XII Waiting 102 

XIII A Battle by Night 109 

XIV The Glory in the Gloom .129 

XV The Bright Side 145 

XVI A Man with Five Lives 151 

XVII A Modern Miracle 161 

XVIII A Ring of Gold 175 

XIX A Practical Joke 188 

XX A Battle with Demons 199 

XXI A Strange Disciplinarian 210 

XXII The Curriculum of City Life 229 

XXIII A Criminal by Necessity 237 




Photo by Rogers & Hewing:. 

THE LADY OF GOOD CHEER 



BESIDE THE BOWERY 



BY 

JOHN HOPKINS DENISON 



SOMETIME PASTOR OF THE 
CHURCH OF THE SEA AND LAND 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 

1914 






Copyright, 19 14, 
By D0DD» mead AND COMPANY 



OCT 24 1914 

*C!.A387188 



w.^ 



INTRODUCTION 

There are lives so full of inspiration and self- 
sacrifice and faith, that one feels the wish to hold 
fast the memory of every detail, and to place them 
In some treasure house impregnable to the assaults 
of time, where each event and word may be pre- 
served. Such a life Eliza Rockwell lived among 
the folk of many lands and many needs in the 
crowded tenements beside the Bowery. The 
story of her life Is written so deeply into the lives 
of many hundreds that it might easily be read by 
any who would take the pains. But her work was 
hidden away in the narrow crowded streets under 
the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge, and there are few 
of the upper world who know even her name. 
Those who have known her personality will al- 
ways treasure every memory of her life and work, 
and It Is chiefly for their sake that the author has 
collected these memories of her life among the 
people whom she loved better than her own health 
and happiness. 

Few of her friends will ever forget the service 
held in her memory in the old Church of the Sea 
and Land, close to the Bowery, in the neighbour- 
hood where she had worked so long. The church 
was filled from the pulpit to the doors by men and 

ix 



X INTRODUCTION 

women whom she had helped in the hour of their 
sorest need. Their presence was no formal or 
perfunctory matter. They came, moved by deep- 
est reverence and love, for they knew that she had 
laid down her life for them. There was scarcely 
a dry eye in the church as they looked for the last 
time on her form, worn out by hard and faithful 
work in their behalf. There was hardly a soul 
there to whom she had not brought life and hope 
in some hour of sickness or despair. I looked into 
one face after another and remembered all the 
bitter struggles with hunger and disease and sin in 
which she had borne a part. I pictured each as 
he had been and saw what through her he had 
become. I wished that all men might see what I 
saw, and understand what one brave, self-sacrific- 
ing life may do to transform humanity. 

An ordinary description of Eliza Rockwell 
would convey to a stranger not the slightest idea 
of what she really was. To depict certain per- 
sons, it is needful only to tell how they looked; 
and from the contour of the chin, the flash of the 
eye, the cut of a gown, one knows them altogether. 
To reveal others, one must tell what they said, and 
in the burning torrent of words or the brilliant 
epigram, the soul of the man is revealed. Still 
other characters one can make clear only by de- 
scribing what has happened to them, and we dis- 
cover the shape of their souls by examining the 
world of environing circumstance which has 



INTRODUCTION xi 

formed them. There are a few, however — and 
these perhaps are the greatest souls — of whom 
but little may be learned by these methods. To 
know them, we must look not at their faces, but at 
the faces of those about them; we must note not 
their words, but the deeds of those to whom they 
have spoken; we must examine not the mould in 
which the world has shaped them, but the impress 
which their lives have set upon the world. As 
they pass, like some hidden magnet, they trans- 
form the relations of all things about them. For 
in them, concealed beneath an unpretending ex- 
terior and commonplace words and everyday 
events, lies the great force that casts down the 
mighty from their seats, and lifts up the poor out 
of the dunghill. 

Such a character was that of Eliza Rockwell. 

It is, therefore, not the purpose of this book to 
present the reader with an ordinary biography of 
personal description and facts In chronological 
order. It is enough to condense such a biography 
into briefest outline. Mrs. Rockwell lived the 
earlier part of her life in Binghamton, N. Y. 
After the death of her husband, she came to New 
York to study in the Training School for Christian 
Workers of the New York City Missions. She 
started on her work at the Church of the Sea and 
Land in 1894, and continued there for fifteen 
years. For those who did not know her, we might 
add that she was tall and slender almost to frailty; 



xii INTRODUCTION 

her face somewhat long In contour, with strong, 
firm chin and high forehead and aquiline nose; her 
mouth rather large, with straight determined lips ; 
her eyes deep set and penetrating. But no amount 
of biographical and descriptive detail would give 
even the faintest idea of the real woman. It Is 
only as one sees the effect of her life on the men 
and women with whom she lived that one begins to 
discern what manner of person she was. Under 
her Influence hves that were cold and hard grew 
warm and sensitive; wooden insensibility was 
transformed Into living, tender humanity, and 
brutal cruelty Into courtesy; base appetites gave 
way to visions of the spirit, and despair yielded to 
hope, — and It is only as one sees her soul so re- 
flected in the lives of others that one begins to 
understand what she herself was. 

It has, therefore, been the aim of the author in 
the sketches which follow to picture as accurately 
as possible a few of the men and women whom 
she knew and loved; because It Is in their lives 
that those who knew her can see her as she truly 
was; and It Is in the mirror of their deeds and 
lives alone that those who never knew her may 
hope to find a true image of her spirit. 

Those who through these pages may learn to 
see Eliza Rockwell as she was, cannot fail in some 
measure to share her interest in the men and 
women to whom she gave her life, different though 
their circumstances and characteristics may seem 



INTRODUCTION xlii 

from those of that world with which we are 
familiar. Amid the over-refinements of civilisa- 
tion and culture we sometimes forget the great 
mass of men who are struggling fiercely with al- 
most primitive passions, men for whom the A B 
C of the moral code — the things we take for 
granted — are a matter of difficult, even of des- 
perate, achievement. In contrast to the subtle 
analyses of the modern psychological novel, and 
the hair-splitting ethics of the romanticist, and 
the exaggerated remorse of the neurasthenic, 
there is a desperate reality about the battle of this 
frail woman with the brute passions of men for 
the great fundamentals of morality, that makes 
much of our best effort seem in comparison a 
mere beating of the air. 

Those who read stories of the slums to be as- 
sured that, frightful though such an environment 
would be to us, to the poor themselves these con- 
ditions afford plentiful amusement and abundant 
opportunities of happiness, will find little satis- 
faction In these pages. Nothing can be more un- 
true to fact, or more Immoral In effect than the 
cheap optimism characteristic of much so-called 
" Slum Literature," which Is really only a sop flung 
to the consciences of those who, in a city where 
such conditions exist, enjoy comfortable homes and 
happy lives without stirring a finger to better those 
conditions. Literature can only be pernicious in 
its effect If It leads men to suppose that environ- 



xlv INTRODUCTION 

ment counts for nothing, and that when a man is 
out of work, half starved, subject to bad habits, 
and living in the old-time Cherry Street tenement, 
it requires only a little religion to make him happy 
and prosperous. A slight acquaintance with the 
work of Mrs. Rockwell makes one realise that the 
terrible suffering of the poor in our great cities 
calls for remedies far more radical than the mere 
preaching of the gospel of redemption and the ex- 
pression of personal friendliness. Under such 
conditions honesty and virtue and happiness are 
so difficult of attainment as to seem almost miracu- 
lous in the case of those who realise them, and the 
fact that men are willing to struggle toward them 
against such desperate odds, and that at times they 
do succeed in attaining them, should give an as- 
surance that when such men receive a fair chance 
they will respond to It In a way that will abun- 
dantly repay the efforts made In their behalf. 

It would be difficult to exaggerate the distress 
and wretchedness of the men and women described 
in these sketches, for Mrs. Rockwell's work In 
New York covered those terrible years when thou- 
sands of able-bodied worklngmen could find no 
employment, and little children were sent to school 
day after day with no food. It Is not surprising, 
therefore, that In many cases even one with such 
extraordinary power over men as she possessed, 
should have failed; but It should be evident from 
the narratives that follow that her failures were 



INTRODUCTION xv 

due to conditions the existence of which is a blot 
upon a Christian civilisation. 

These sketches make no pretence of being well- 
rounded stories. They are descriptions of actual 
events and of real persons, presented as accurately 
as memory can depict them, in the hope that they 
may aid in preserving to those who loved her, the 
thought of one who was possessed of the unfalter- 
ing faith that there is no life so perverted but 
that with a true friend and a fair chance it may be 
transformed to a thing of worth — one who in 
that faith gave herself and all that she had to the 
service of her neighbours beside the Bowery. 



INGENUITY ASKEW 

There is a certain fascination about canvassing 
the ancient tumble-down tenements of lower New 
York. Each door opens upon some new and 
strange type of life. One sees side by side the 
flags of all nations, and reads inscriptions in every 
language from Hebrew and Greek to Chinese. 
One passes at a step from Syria to Lithuania, from 
Sicily to furthest Russia and Japan. One may 
enter upon a mixed-ale party or a rag-pickers' bee, 
a sweat-shop or a dive. One meets every sort of 
greeting, from the whining welcome of the beggar 
to the resentful curse of an anarchist. 

Of all the homes into which the Lady of Good 
Cheer entered on her journeys of friendship the 
one which impressed her perhaps most vividly with 
its strangeness was one which she discovered on a 
winter day in a wretched old tenement in Water 
Street. It was a season when thousands were out 
of work and the distress was so great that she had 
been asked to go through the poorest tenements 
in search of those who were actually starving and 
who had not found the city's sources of relief. As 
she ascended from door to door, she was greeted 
by responses in almost every known tongue, and 



2 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

when she reached the fourth floor of the tenement 
and knocked at one of the doors, it was a pleasant 
surprise to hear a " Come in," in good broad 
Scotch. 

The Lady of Good Cheer was by no means pre- 
pared, however, for the scene which met her eyes 
as she entered the room. Its chaotic contents 
made It appear like the headquarters of some queer 
Demiurge who was attempting to equip a world 
with some new and strange form of vegetation. 
The floor was piled high with dry stalks, and 
brown bushes, and withered weeds, and shrubs; 
and beside them were heaps of some kind of vege- 
table matter of an unnaturally vivid shade of 
green. Nearby she was horrified to see a huge tub 
filled with blood or something that counterfeited 
it successfully. A neighbouring vat contained a 
bright green poisonous-looking liquid. Over it 
bent a wiry little Scotchman with dark side whisk- 
ers, a sharp nose, a sharp chin and sharper eyes. 
His face was decorated with a colour scheme which 
rivalled that of an Indian brave. Green was the 
predominant shade, but the weird and ghastly ap- 
pearance which it imparted was fortunately re- 
lieved by a few brilliant dashes of scarlet and gold. 
Opposite this chromo sat a woman with a good 
homely Scotch face and keen brown eyes, one of 
which persisted in a special independent twinkle of 
its own, while the other glowered in a questioning 
scowl. She was busily engaged in tying up bun- 



INGENUITY ASKEW 3 

dies of flowers, whose odd shape and vivid hues 
would have given Linnaeus a troubled half-hour 
before he could have discovered a Latin phrase 
sufficiently profane to do them justice. There 
was a singular and penetrating odour about the 
whole place, an odour at once pungent and yet sug- 
gestive of some heavy and overpowering perfume. 
The room seemed full of children. Two little 
girls were helping their mother gather and bind 
the stalks. A small boy also lent occasional aid, 
while a smaller child played on the floor. A baby 
was asleep on the bed, the only article of furniture 
in the room which was not piled high with the 
materials of their labour. 

The Scotchman turned his decorated counte- 
nance slightly toward the Lady of Good Cheer. 
The sharp nose, standing out like an illuminated 
capital in scarlet and gold, added emphasis to the 
snappy query: " Who are you? " 

She explained herself as best as she could, but 
not to his satisfaction. 

" Well, if ye come frae a kirk ye can get out 
o' here I " he said. " They're all fakes, frauds 
and liars! I know 'em and I want none of 
'em!" 

" Don't talk like that, Tom," said his wife. 
" I know her. She's a good lady and she's helped 
lots o' poor folks around here. Don't mind him," 
she said to the Lady of Good Cheer, " he's terrible 
cranky about the church. Some of the church 



4 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

people treated him awful mean, an' he'll never for- 
give 'em." 

The Lady of Good Cheer sat on the edge of a 
chair full of bushes, patted the head of a little 
girl who stood by, and talked with the mother, 
while the man worked on in sulky silence. 

The man did his best to freeze out the Lady of 
Good Cheer, but something in her voice as she 
chatted, seemed gradually to wake old associations 
in his mind, and he listened in spite of himself. 
Her voice had the singular power of suggesting 
even to the most unimpressionable some softening 
memory of a mother or of a home. It struck the 
note of the eternal womanliness ! He looked up 
at some casual appeal, and caught the twinkle in 
her kindly eyes, that were surveying him as one 
might look at an absurdly petulant child. Her 
firm lips and strong chin were quite as determined 
as his own square Scotch jaw, and somehow, before 
he knew it, he had capitulated, and was talking as 
if he had known her all his life. 

He recounted to her, how, in desperation be- 
cause he was out of work, he had devised this 
extraordinary employment. Over in the Jersey 
flats he had found growing a weed with a tall stalk 
and prickly pod, which opened into a sort of star. 
He gilded the centres of these and painted the 
prickly calyx a bright scarlet. Then he gathered 
a mass of brown vegetation which he dyed bright 
green and tied up in bunches with the scarlet and 



INGENUITY ASKEW. 5 

gold flowers. Being a good salesman he had suc- 
ceeded in leaving a couple of these bunches in ex- 
change for a quarter in nearly every tenement, 
advocating them as an incomparable ornament for 
the mantelpiece. The people of the tenements 
were unable to resist the charms of these gorgeous 
blooms, which were guaranteed never to wither, 
and he prospered greatly. 

There was also a subordinate source of revenue. 
He had discovered a spot where skunk cabbage 
grew in profusion. He thought the plants inter- 
esting and unusual, and dug them up and brought 
them home, but the unpleasant odour reduced their 
market value to zero. He had accordingly hit on 
the idea of pouring citronella perfume into the cup 
of the plant. It retained the perfume, which com- 
bined with its original odour to make something 
quite new and entirely unrecognisable in the olfac- 
tory sphere. Then he potted the plants and sold 
them as " Japanese lilies." The East Side not be- 
ing skilled in botanical analysis was charmed by 
these strange oriental flowers, and delighted with 
their rare perfume, and bought all he could pre- 
pare. He calculated to adopt another business 
before the citronella wore off and left the original 
nauseating odour. 

The Lady of Good Cheer entirely won the Don- 
ald family, and they became loyal attendants at 
church. For a year or so everything prospered. 
They were very religious, they knew the Bible 



6 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

thoroughly, and were to all appearances honest, 
and earnest in prayer. Then something began to 
go wrong. They ceased to prosper. Donald 
had at length glutted the market for scarlet and 
gold bouquets, and Japanese lilies were no longer 
in good odour with the public. He had found 
other employment, but lost it without adequate 
cause. Things went from bad to worse. One 
day the Lady of Good Cheer found little Agnes 
barefoot and ragged, begging in the street. She 
went to hunt up the family and found the mother 
and six children, — a new baby had just arrived, — 
huddled in a wretched little attic in Cherry Street, 
and there enshrined in the place of honour upon 
the kitchen table was the dark squat Divinity to 
whose malevolent influence she at once ascribed 
the change in their fortune. It needed no further 
proof that they had betaken themselves to the wor- 
ship of evil spirits, when there before her stood the 
visible evidence thereof — a black bottle. 

It was a hard blow to the Lady of Good Cheer. 
She hated to think that all their earnestness in re- 
ligion had been a cloak of deception to disguise 
such a worship as this. It was no trifling matter 
to her. She gave to the men and women whom 
she found battling with evil and poverty that pas- 
sion of love which Is itself a Divine gift, and It 
cut her to the heart to find that she had been de- 
ceived. It was this love, disappointed and yet 
still trusting, that spoke In the burning words with 



INGENUITY ASKEW 7 

which she reproved the woman before her. Mrs. 
Donald listened, at first with flushed cheeks and 
angry eyes, and then with bowed head and hot 
tears as she recognised the supreme authority that 
alone has the right to reprove another and enter 
into the Inmost recesses of his soul. Hard though 
she was, she melted before it into confession. 
They had both been drinking, and Donald had be- 
haved like a demon. Her face and breast were 
scarred with his blows. He had driven the chil- 
dren Into the street to beg, and had taken for 
drink the money they brought back. For some 
days they had lived in sodden intoxication, leaving 
the children to run wild after each had done his 
turn at begging. 

The Lady of Good Cheer did her utmost to 
bring Donald to his senses, but he was too far gone 
in drink to be susceptible to reason or affection. 
He continued to beat his wife and the children and 
to drive them out upon the streets to beg. At last 
the family had to be given up in order to save the 
children. The Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Children was called in. Donald was 
intoxicated and resisted when the agents came; 
and as a result he was given two months on the 
Island. Two of the girls and the boy were put 
in the Juvenile Asylum. The oldest sister and 
the babies were left with the mother. 

When the two months were up, Donald re- 
turned sober and penitent, and manifested a great 



8 BESIDE THE BOWERY . 

desire to get back his children. The Lady of 
Good Cheer told him that the Society refused to 
give them up until he had a decent home for them, 
and could give good evidence that he was sincere 
in his renunciation of whiskey. In a year or so, 
with his wife's help, he had acquired a nice little 
home. But just as the Lady of Good Cheer 
began to feel safe about helping him in securing 
the return of the children, she found evidence that 
he was drinking again. The more she learned of 
his former abuse of the children the more she 
hesitated to put them again into his hands. When 
she refused her aid, Donald stormed and raged. 
He denounced her and the church as kidnappers, 
frauds, and liars. He secured a lawyer who made 
appeals in behalf of a " poor but honest labourer, 
robbed of his children by the malice and slander 
of the church and by the injustice and barbarity of 
the Gerry Society.'' 

Donald's plea found supporters, as such pleas 
against the church often do, but it was not until 
the younger girls were fifteen and sixteen that the 
father got possession of them again. The Lady 
of Good Cheer continued to treat him with kind- 
ness, and even helped him in one crisis by paying 
his rent when he was about to be dispossessed. In 
return, supported by his lawyer, he lost no oppor- 
tunity to insult her, and to denounce the church. 
It would have been hard to predict anything but a 
disastrous future for the reunited family. 



INGENUITY ASKEW 9 

One morning the Lady of Good Cheer discov- 
ered it plainly written in the pages of The Sun. 
She could not help smiling as she read, at the char- 
acteristic cleverness of the daughters of the canny 
Scot who once supplied the tenements with flowers 
surpassing all the efforts of Nature; but she felt 
defeated and depressed to know that all her work 
had not availed to prevent such extraordinary in- 
genuity from going wrong. The papers gave an 
account of the arrest of the girls for obtaining 
money under false pretences. They pretended to 
be the daughters of a gentleman of social promi- 
nence who had forsaken the elegant leisure of their 
palatial home on Madison Avenue to go about so- 
liciting funds for a mission in the slums In which 
their father was interested. They were trained as 
beggars from the cradle, and now that they were 
dressed in the becoming gowns bequeathed them 
by a lady of fashion, they had sufficient beauty and 
charm to win even greater success than when they 
were clothed in rags. After they had collected a 
goodly sum their contributors began to make re- 
quests to visit the mission. This was confusing, 
and threatened to interrupt the income which was 
flowing in upon them in such rich streams. They 
were clever enough, however, to expand their 
scheme to meet the demands. One day after a 
particularly insistent inquiry from a wealthy con- 
tributor, Alice came forward with a suggestion: 
*' I have it, Agnes I " she cried. " We must really 



lo BESIDE THE BOWERY 

have a mission to show these guys. They won't 
take any more of our dope without." 

" What do you mean? " asked Agnes. 

" I mean we can rent a hall in the slums, and 
there are always lots of fool mission workers 
crazy to hear themselves speak, and we can get 
some one of 'em to come each night. You can 
play the piano, and I can do a bit of exhorting if 
we're up against It for talk. We've got plenty of 
money to rent a cheap stove and some chairs and 
a piano, and when we can really show the place, 
we'll raise twice as much. Only we must have it 
somewhere where there'll be plenty of ragged old 
loafers looking for shelter and a chance to sit 
down." 

They worked out the plan to the letter. They 
selected a favourable spot in Brooklyn, rented a 
stove, a piano and some chairs and soon had per- 
suaded a goodly number of mission workers to 
come and help on certain nights. The mission 
soon was filled with the usual crowd of the desti- 
tute, and they were able to tabulate a sufficient 
number of conversions to increase their income by 
a considerable amount. In the meantime they had 
found it expedient to separate from their father 
and mother, who claimed the lion's share of their 
funds and spent it on drink. Their parents bit- 
terly resented this desertion, and sought them 
everywhere, but could find no trace of them. 

One night the mother, dispossessed of her home 



INGENUITY ASKEW ii 

and just recovering from a prolonged spree, saw 
the open door of the mission, and tired of walking 
the streets with her latest babe in her arms, went 
in to rest. To her utter amazement she beheld 
her two daughters on the platform. She arose to 
her feet and prepared to denounce them. Alice 
saw her standing there, ragged, dishevelled, her 
hair falling about her ears, and her dirty shawl 
wrapped around the baby. It was easy to guess 
her mother's intent to expose them. 

She whispered to Agnes: "Look! There's 
Mother ! If she speaks shell give the whole show 
away." 

She stepped down swiftly to the woman's side 
and whispered, " If you say a word we're all done 
for; keep your mouth shut and we'll give you all 
you want." 

Then she returned to the platform and said: 
" That poor woman has been walking the streets 
all day with her baby, with nothing to eat. She 
has no home, no place to sleep, and not a penny in 
the world. We can't turn her out in the cold with 
that child. Christ said to take In the strangers, 
and I am going to take her into my own house. 
She shall sleep In my own bed, and so long as there 
IS a roof over my head she shall be cared for." 

The audience was greatly impressed by her self- 
sacrificing charity. Some one proposed a collec- 
tion, and the girls soon had in their possession a 
considerable sum of money, which they devoted to 



12 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

fitting out their mother with more suitable gar- 
ments. 

For a time their colossal deceit worked 
smoothly, but the father was on their trail. He 
tracked his wife, and when he found her, there was 
such a violent altercation that the neighbours sent 
for the police. The case was thoroughly investi- 
gated by the Associated Charities and the girls 
were arrested. 

Alice and Agnes were highly indignant at this 
turn of affairs. " Why should we be arrested? " 
they said. " We work for a living. If any one 
thinks it's a soft snap to run a mission every night 
in the year, and raise money for it every day, let 
him try it. They say we Spend some of the money 
given for the mission on ourselves to go to the 
theatre and all that, but so does this agent of the 
Charities that hasn't been arrested. Where does 
he get the money he spends from his salary to go 
to the theatre? Some one gave it to the Charity 
Society for their work with the poor. A person 
must have a little fun now and then." The Court 
did not respect their indignation nor appreciate 
their arguments. They had at last reached a place 
where they could no more be helped by the love 
and patience of the friend whom they had rejected, 
and it was the hand of the law which at length 
dealt the Donald family its '^ coup de grace J* 



II 

A LIVING WAGE 

The Lady of Good Cheer was devoted to all the 
dwellers In her district, but like all of us she had 
her favourites, and one of these was old Mrs. Lar- 
kins. There were those for whom the dirty 
crowded tenements of Cherry Hill seemed a nat- 
ural habitat. They had found their own place, in 
obedlejice to the resistless law of gravitation, and 
she appreciated that If she removed them to higher 
spheres, they would only sink again to the same 
dead level, unless first she could put Into them a 
new spirit. When this was accomplished, she 
found that they rose spontaneously into a better 
environment. There were others, however, who 
did not belong in Cherry Street, and who were 
held down by the operation of laws which she felt 
increasingly to be unjust and Inhuman. Though In 
most cases, salvation depended on a change in the 
individual, — in cases such as these It seemed to 
involve a change in the whole social and industrial 
order. 

She felt this especially when she looked at Mrs. 
Larklns, and saw the clear-cut, regular features, 
the high brow and the smooth, evenly-parted, 
white hair, the cheeks thin and pale from lack of 

13 



14 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

food, but still fair and unfurrowed by wrinkles, 
and then noted the quaint old bonnet, the pathetic, 
worn coat and the skirt, — clean but patched in a 
score of places. Every line and stitch in the cloth- 
ing told the story of cruel want and desperate need, 
just as every line in the face spoke of a character 
faithful to all virtue, an intelligent mind and a 
brave spirit. 

News had reached the Lady of Good Cheer that 
Mr. Larkins, who had long been ill and out of 
work, was very sick, and she at once determined 
to call. She made her way with some difficulty 
up a black stairway in an ancient dwelling house 
in Catherine Street. When she had reached what 
seemed to be the top, she turned to one side and 
groped her way to the winding stairs that led yet 
nearer to the sky. She knocked on the door at 
the top, and entered a true attic room. Here 
there seemed to be hardly a square yard of wall 
or ceiling that was not interrupted by some queer 
angle. The roof was high enough to accommo- 
date a giant on one side, and on the other even a 
Tom Thumb would have felt obliged to stoop. 
The only light came through a dormer window 
which interrupted the slope of the ceiling, and 
which was set so high that a Goliath could not 
have looked through it. On a bed at one side lay 
a man. His head was the head of a philosopher, 
with a high, bulging forehead seamed with 
wrinkles. His hair and close-cropped moustache 



A LIVING WAGE 15 

were grey. His clear-cut, aquiline nose and keen, 
dark eyes that looked out beneath bushy brows 
betokened Intellectual force of a type that Is not 
accustomed to make Its habitat In a fourth-ward 
attic. 

At a table near by Mrs. Larklns sat sewing. A 
large pile of trousers lay beside her on the table. 
She had a pair in her hands, and was sewing with 
feverish haste, holding her work close to her spec- 
tacled eyes. She did not even stop working when 
the Lady of Good Cheer entered. 

" How do you do 1 " said Mrs. Larklns. *' I'm 
glad to see you. It's the lady from the church," 
she added with a glance at the sick man. 

He responded by a grunt, which could hardly 
have been Interpreted as an enthusiastic welcome. 

" Excuse me if I keep on working," the woman 
continued. " I've got to finish these trousers to- 
day somehow. How I'm going to do it, I'm sure 
I don't know," and she glanced at the huge pile 
with a long-drawn sigh. 

" Certainly, go right on with your work," said 
the Lady of Good Cheer. " I heard Mr. Larklns 
was sick, and came in to see if there was anything 
I could do." 

" If you came in to read the Bible or the Prayer 
Book to me, you may just as well go away," said 
the old man crustily. " I've been a printer for 
nearly fifty years, and I've set up enough stuff 
about the Bible to know there isn't any truth In It; 



i6 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

and as for a God, you won't find many printers who 
believe in any such thing. You can fool these 
ignorant people around here all you want, but a 
printer has to keep up with the thought of the 
world. He doesn't take any stock in your old 
superstitions. I've set up plenty of articles in my 
time that proved as plain as could be that there 
wasn't any God." 

This tirade did not rouse the Lady of Good 
Cheer to antagonism. She was looking at hirrt 
closely, trying to determine whether this was 
merely a pose, or whether his words were sin- 
cere. 

" But don't you sometimes wish that you had 
God's help? " she said at last. 

"Nonisensel What do I want God's help 
for?'* he answered testily. "I can do what's 
right if I want to, — if there is such a thing as right 
and wrong." 

" I think most of us find it very hard always to 
do what is wisest and best," said the Lady of Good 
Cheer. "We find that we do foolish things in 
spite of ourselves, and then have to suffer for 
them." 

" That's true enough," broke in the woman. 
"What's the use of talking, John? You know 
you wouldn't have lost your job and got sick if. you 
hadn't been terrible foolish." 

" I've never harmed any man," said the man, ■ 
" and if a man wants to drink a glass now and 



A LIVING WAGE 17 

then there isn't anything wrong in that. He's got 
a right to do as he chooses with his life." 

" Do you feel satisfied with what youVe done 
with your life? " asked the Lady of Good Cheer. 

The old man remained silent a moment. The 
keen grey eyes wandered from her face, and 
seemed to be looking far away into the past. 
" I'm not saying I didn't hope for something dif- 
ferent," he said at last. " We were born on the 
old island of Jersey in the Channel, and when we 
got married and started to come over here we 
thought we were going to do great things, didn't 
wc? " he went on. " I never thought to be lying 
in a great garret with nothing to eat and my wife 
working herself to death to keep a roof over our 
heads. It's shameful the way they pay a woman 
for working," he added with a sudden flash In the 
keen eyes. " It's all wrong. If there was a God, 
he would straighten out some of these things, I can 
tell you. I'm not any too good myself, but If I 
was God I wouldn't let them grind down wretched 
women with hard work and starve them with poor 
pay in any world I made. How much do you 
think they give her for finishing those trousers? " 

" I don't know," said the Lady of Good Cheer. 
" Perhaps as little as ten cents apiece." 

" Ten cents apiece I They give her eighteen 
cents a dozen pair, and work as hard as she can, 
she can't do more than a dozen a day. Our rent 
is little enough here, but she can't even pay that. 



i8 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

let alone buying food. Do you think a just God 
would stand a world like that? " 

" It is terrible," said the Lady of Good Cheer, 
" too terrible for words. But they say that the 
kind of work which is done by women at home 
wouldn't be done at all unless it could be done so 
cheaply. It does seem as if they ought to pay 
more, or else that the work ought not to be done. 
I've just been to see some people in Cherry Street. 
The man is out of work and has two little children. 
His wife found a chance to make those little round 
boxes that they use for charlotte russe. I went in 
and found them working like mad creatures, while 
the children played on the floor near by. The 
woman was pasting, the man fitting the cardboard 
together and piling up the boxes. How much do 
you think they got for making those boxes ? They 
got $i.8o for 5,000 1 They could just clear their 
rent and get a bit to eat by working furiously 
from dawn into the night. I know another girl 
whose father and mother are both crippled. She 
tries to support the family by making artificial 
flowers. She does best with violets and they give 
her twenty-five cents a gross, — a quarter for 
making 144 flowers! " 

*' It's not right, I tell you," said the old printer. 
'' As long as any human being is giving his best 
skill and strength to his work, he ought to get 
enough to pay to keep him, — yes, and enough so 
that he could have a little fun out of life ; and I tell 



A LIVING WAGE 19 

you if any just God had the ordering of this world 
he'd see that it was arranged that way." 

*' Perhaps he is arranging It," the Lady of Good 
Cheer said. " If we were all true Christians 
things would be about as you want them, wouldn't 
they?" 

" Perhaps they would," he asserted, " but that 
won't happen this year." 

*' We can each one of us start In and do our 
best," she replied. " That will be a beginning at 
least." 

" It won't do any good for me to start," he said. 
" When you've made good Christians out of all 
the rich men and employers, come to me and per- 
haps I'll join in." 



Ill 

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF A HUSBAND 

" It's a comfort to make a call once In a while on 
a good normal, respectable working family," 
thought the Lady of Good Cheer, as she started 
to climb the steps of a neatly kept, old-fashioned 
house in Cherry Street. One gets tired of finding 
a skeleton In every house, especially among the 
poor, who have no closets In which to conceal It, 
and the Lady of Good Cheer felt the need of a 
commonplace conversation about housekeeping and 
dressmaking and babies and other normal subjects 
of feminine Interest. Mrs. Finley's house was in 
pleasing contrast with the squalid and poverty- 
stricken home she had been visiting. There was 
a well-furnished parlour Into which Mrs. Finley 
ushered her distinguished visitors, throwing open 
the blinds to Illuminate the gaily coloured chromos 
on the walls, and the satin scarfs that decked the 
mantel and adorned the back of the plush sofa. 
Mrs. Finley was always saluted by that name, 
in spite of the fact that she was married to Mr. 
Hart. Perhaps the old name persisted because 
Miss Rose Finley, her daughter by her former 
marriage, focussed the attention of the public. 
Miss Rose was a very pretty girl of sixteen with a 

20 



THE VALUE OF A HUSBAND 21 

fluffy mass of golden hair, a pink and white com- 
plexion, and red and pouting lips. Her name was 
familiar through that block in Cherry Street, and 
was naturally transferred to her mother. More- 
over, Mr. Hart was an insignificant-looking, 
elderly workingman, wizened and wiry, who never 
seemed to have anything to say for himself, but 
went to his work regularly every morning, and did 
not return until nightfall. 

The Lady of Good Cheer looked at her watch 
as she knocked at the door, allowing herself ten 
minutes of quiet conversation with Mrs. Finley 
before she returned to her problems. It was a 
somewhat broken voice that called *' Come in," 
and she entered to find Mrs. Finley sitting with 
her apron to her eyes, sobbing distressfully. 

"Oh, Mrs. Finley! What is it?" she asked. 
" Has anything happened? " 

" I can't stand it no longer," sobbed Mrs. Fin- 
ley. " It ain't no use tryin\ There ain't nobody 
as has such troubles as me, and I'm just clean beat 
out." 

The Lady of Good Cheer sought to mask her 
amazement. So there was a skeleton here, of all 
places 1 She would sooner have looked for one in 
a butler's pantry 1 What could it be? Her 
thoughts went at once to the daughter. She must 
be the cause of the trouble. 

** Has anything happened to Rose? " she asked. 
" Do tell me if I can do anything to help." 



22 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

"Oh, it's too awful!" Mrs. Flnley sobbed. 
" To think that my daughter should ever hear such 
things and see such things ! If she isn't ruined it 
will be a wonder." 

The Lady of Good Cheer was more and more 
mystified. To construct a skeleton out of such 
very commonplace family materials was a task for 
the imagination that was beyond her. She could 
only sit and wait till the closet door was opened. 

'* It wasn't like this when Mr. Finley was 
alive," the woman went on. " He was a decent 
hard-working man, and he always treated me like 
a lady." 

Then the skeleton had its hiding-place in Mr. 
Hart's coat tails. So much was evident. But 
what mysterious diabolism could work under the 
form of that wizened old workingman? 

" Has Mr. Hart done anything wrong to you? " 
she asked. 

Mrs. Finley, ordinarily a quiet, self-contained, 
woman, was utterly beside herself to-day. Her 
suffering had reached a point where it must find 
expression. 

"Oh, he's a terrible man!" she burst forth. 
" You wouldn't believe it to look at him, but he's 
near killed me again and again. Last night he 
beat me within an inch o' me life. An' I had the 
house all fixed up for him and a nice supper on 
the table. But he was that cranky that nothing 
suited him, and he cursed me and threw the dishes 



THE VALUE OF A HUSBAND 23. 

on the floor. Such language ! It ain't fit for my 
daughter to hear such talk. He comes home 
drunk every Saturday night, and he's as cross as a 
bear. You can't get a word out o' him that isn't 
a curse. He'll be the death o' me — I tell you I 
can't stand it no longer. Me an' him has got to 
part." 

" I don't blame you for feeling as you do," said 
the Lady of Good Cheer, who had listened in 
amazement at this unexpected outburst. " No 
one believes more than I do in a wife's standing 
by her husband, but you have your daughter to 
think of, and this man is not the father of your 
children. If he Is what you say he Is, and nothing 
will make him treat you decently, I think you are 
perfectly right in separating from him. You can 
come up to the church on Thursday night and see 
the lawyer there and he will draw up the papers 
for you." 

Mrs. Finley took her apron from her eyes and 
stopped sobbing. " You mean for me to get a 
separation from me husband?" she asked. 

" Yes," said the Lady of Good Cheer. " I'll 
help you if you wish. It is terrible that you should 
be treated so." 

*' Yes, It's mighty bad," said Mrs. Finley, 
slowly drumming on the table with her fingers, 
*' but you see, I don't know as I'd best get a separa^ 



tionJ* 



You mean you'd rather have a divorce? 



24 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

That would be much more difficult. I don't know 
if that could be done." 

*' No, I don't believe I want a divorce." 

"Well, what do you want? If you are to be 
protected from this man, you must have a separa- 
tion or a divorce." 

" Well, I don't know. Maybe I was too hasty. 
It does seem terrible hard, but I don't believe I 
want a separation." 

" What I Do you really care for him in spite 
of all?" 

" Care for him! " said Mrs. FInley. '' Yes, I 
love him just like I would the grizzly bear in the 
zoo If he was me husband. Bah I I hate the sight 
of him." 

" Well, then, why don't you want a separa- 
tion?" 

" Well, you see some ways he treats me pretty 
good, better'n lots o' husbands I know. He al- 
ways brings his money home regular every Satur- 
day. He keeps two dollars for the drink and 
hands over ten dollars to me. 'Tain't every wife 
as gets the whole o' ten dollars when her man's 
only making twelve." 

" That is a good point, certainly," said the Lady 
of Good Cheer. *' It seems to show that he cares 
more for you than many men do for their wives." 

"Cares for me I Not much he doesn't I He 
treats me like dirt." 



THE VALUE OF A HUSBAND 25 

" But I don't understand. Why don't you want 
to leave him? " 

" Well, you see, after Mr. Finley died I had a 
terrible hard time. I had to scrub and wash, and, 
work as hard as I could, we pretty near starved to 
death. Now I get ten dollars a week, and that's 
enough to keep up a nice home. There ain't many 
men would give me that much, neither. Of 
course it's hard, — his beatin' and cursin' me every 
Saturday and Sunday when he's home; but it ain't 
nowhere near so hard as workin' all week till your 
back's broke, and you can't see straight, and all 
your body hurts like you'd been pounded, fer a 
promise of five dollars, and never knowin' when 
you'll get kicked out to starve. You see it's like 
this: Husbands is mighty mean to live with, but 
you can't live at all without 'em. It's a sight 
better to have a nice home, and put up with a row 
oncet a week, than to live a dog's life all the time. 
When a woman's married she's only got one man 
to knock her around a bit now and then, but when 
she's alone, every one's knockin' her around all the 
time, and she never knows when she'll be turned 
onto the street to die o' starvation. I guess I 
know. I ain't lived that way five years for 
nothin'. I get discontented-like now and then, but 
In me heart I know what's good for me. When 
I've got a husband I know enough to stick to him." 



IVl 

A TWIG TRANSPLANTED 

" If I get enough money to move you to another 
house, will you try to keep it clean and get rid of 
these old rags? " asked the Lady of Good Cheer 
of Mrs. Malloy. 

She was standing in a dark' basement room, for 
she did not dare to sit down. The room was lit- 
tered with great piles of dirty rags and broken im- 
plements that were heaped everywhere against the 
wall, under the table and in the chairs. There 
were black rags, blue rags, red rags, and above all 
brown rags once white. It looked as if the 
woman had picked up every filthy scrap from the 
tenement yards and stored it, as the bibliophile 
litters his room with choice and ancient editions. 
The odour of this soiled decaying mass of rags was 
so unspeakably offensive that the Lady of Good 
Cheer felt positively ill. The thought that a man 
and his wife and two children actually lived in this 
refuse heap, filled her with disgust and horror. 
She would have preferred to sleep on an ash heap 
in the open air rather than be shut up in a dark 
basement with this hoard of garbage. The 
woman was not an Italian ragpicker. The Lady 
of Good Cheer knew many such in Cherry Street 

2^ 



A TWIG TRANSPLANTED 27 

whose rooms were piled high with carefully as- 
sorted bales of rags. There was no reason for 
this insane collection of dirty poisonous refuse, 
other than some queer quirk in the woman's mind 
which led her to cling to every soiled scrap that 
came within her reach. 

Again and again the Lady of Good Cheer 
had begged Mrs. Malloy to clean house and get 
rid of this mass of debris for the children's sake. 
Several times the woman had promised to destroy 
her strange collection, but it seemed that she really 
could not nerve herself to make the sacrifice. She 
was a shrunken, apologetic little person, arrayed 
in a selection of her own rags, so that she looked 
like a third-class scarecrow, — by no means the 
distinguished type that wears a complete suit of 
clothes, and stands erect and defiant with out- 
stretched arms threatening the thief, but the kind 
that is patched up with all sorts of remnants, and 
that stands battered and browned by the weather, 
all huddled and shrunken in the consciousness that 
all men and birds must be repelled by its grotesque 
ugliness. Her husband, a stout cumbrous man, 
with a fat, heavy, and unintelligent face, sat and 
stared at the Lady of Good Cheer with the blank- 
ness of a Chinese idol. His round bulging eyes 
seemed to gaze through her into vacancy, and it 
was sometime before she discovered he was almost 
blind. There was a bright-faced little girl, and a 
boy full of the quick nervous energy that charac- 



28 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

terises the New York street urchin. The Lady 
of Good Cheer was determined that during their 
years of growth they should not have this rag 
heap for their only home. 

Fortune favoured the Lady of Good Cheer. 
To-day when she called she learned that the family 
was to be dispossessed. They were without funds, 
and desperate, and the visitor saw her opportu- 
nity to drive a stern bargain. Mr. Malloy had 
the chance to take up a business In coal and ice in 
Hamilton Street, if he could secure the necessary 
capital. 

" If you will let me send little Mamie away to 
the country, I will try to get enough money to 
start Mr. Malloy in business," she said. 

*' Oh, will you?" said Mrs. Malloy, clasping 
her hands in cringing gratitude. *' How can I 
thank you I If we could only get money to move 
and get started in business everything would be all 
right again, wouldn't it, Tim? " 

Mr. Malloy made a sound between a growl and 
a grunt, which might have been expressive of grati- 
tude or resentment. They were both people of 
some education who had seen better days, but little 
by little through his blindness and her strange pen- 
chant for rags and dirt, they had sunk to the degra- 
dation in which the Lady of Good Cheer had 
found them. 

At length the bargain was consummated in spite 
of the unresponsive grunts of Mr. Malloy. 



A TWIG TRANSPLANTED 29 

Mamie, a frail, pale child clothed In the best rags 
her mother could pick from the heap, was sent to 
the country. It was a novel enough experience 
for her, and she looked forward to it with enthu- 
siasm. She had heard of the woods and fields and 
longed to see their wonders. As she drove away 
from the country station, the road led between 
some huge piles of logs corded and ready for ship- 
ment. Through her father's trade In combustibles, 
she was familiar with coal and wood and had nat- 
urally thought of the forests as the Inexhaustible 
source of the wood she had seen. In school she 
had heard much of the woods, and she looked for- 
ward to seeing a forest as soon as she reached the 
country. As they drove between the piles of 
corded firewood, she cried excitedly: "Are 
those the woods? Say, are those the woods?" 
It took the old farmer, who was driving, some 
time to realise that this child of the city was actu- 
ally so ignorant of Nature as to suppose that these 
piles of logs were a primitive forest. She was 
placed in a nice old farm house, far away from the 
noise of the railroads and from all association with 
city life. Here the days went by while she learned 
to feed the chickens, milk the cow, peel the pota- 
toes and dig in the garden. Slowly she was meta- 
morphosed from the pale, nervous child of the city, 
to a fat-limbed, rosy-cheeked country girl. 

In the meantime the Malloys moved, the neces- 
sary capital being duly supplied by the Lady of 



30 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

Good Cheer. Some days later she called at their 
new dwelling. She entered a low basement far 
below the level of the street. The front room 
was half full of coal, which was strewn all over the 
floor. The black dust was on the walls and win- 
dows, on the chairs and table, on the coat and face 
of Mr. Malloy, who sat in an armchair, staring 
with his unblinking goggle eyes, more josslike than 
ever. The walls were hung with the dirty hats, 
coats and shovels of the street cleaning depart- 
ment, for Mr. Malloy had cleverly added to his 
business by making his store a checking office for 
the garments of the street cleaners, whose station 
was adjacent. The Lady of Good Cheer passed 
by the unblinking joss who saluted her with a 
grunt, and paused in dismay at the door of the 
room behind. This was the space reserved for 
family life. It was totally dark. No ray of light 
entered save from the room in front, but even this 
feeble illumination sufficed to reveal the piles of 
dirty rags with which it was strewn. There was 
not a corner of the stifling narrow room that was 
not heaped with dirty refuse. In these cramped 
quarters, the mass of debris looked more appalling 
than ever. 

The Lady of Good Cheer was about to remon- 
strate over this flagrant breach of contract, when 
she saw that Mrs. Malloy, seated in the midst of 
her choice collection, was rocking to and fro and 
sobbing and moaning. " Oh, what shall I do," 



A TWIG TRANSPLANTED 31 

she cried again and again. The inquiries of the 
Lady of Good Cheer finally elicited the informa- 
tion that Willie had been accused of stealing a 
dollar from the pocket of one of the coats of the 
Street Cleaning Department that hung in the shop. 

" Such a good boy as he is," Mrs. Malloy added 
Indignantly. " As soon as he gets home from 
school, he takes his papers and off he goes to sell 
them. Many's the day we'd have had no food 
but for Willie and his papers. Then he comes 
home and helps his father with the coats and 
shovels, when the street cleaners go off duty. 
You see Mr. Malloy can't see, and what he'd do 
without Willie I don't know. He has been play- 
ing hookey from school lately, I know, and he's 
got in with some of these bad Hamilton Street 
boys, but I don't believe my Willie would steal." 

Willie was indeed a bright boy, with that aston- 
ishingly quick Intelligence which Is often developed 
by the rough competition of city life, and the Lady 
of Good Cheer had hopes that he would distin- 
guish himself some day. 

He was always ready for any emergency. If 
one of the gang had his foot run over. It was 
Willie who bound up the wounded member with 
deft fingers and who carried his helpless comrade 
on his own shoulders to the nearest dispensary. 

One evening not long before the boys had been 
playing basketball in the Hamilton Street Club 
rooms, when one of them hit the gas jet with the 



32 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

ball and broke It off. The gas poured out in 
a fountain of flame that licked the celling and 
threatened to destroy the house. There were two 
young men from up town in charge of the club, 
but in face of such an emergency, they stood aghast 
and helpless. They knew no way to quench that 
roaring fountain of fire that was spouting destruc- 
tion. Quick as a flash a small urchin darted into 
a corner, threw open a trap door, dived into It, and 
gave a quick turn of his wrist. Instantly flame 
and lights went out, and the room was left In dark- 
ness. The club leaders stood utterly amazed, 
wondering what deus ex machina had Intervened 
In so unaccountable a way to save them from so 
Imminent a disaster. It was sometime before 
they realised that the gas had been shut off where 
It entered the house. How any small urchin had 
found out where the gas pipes ran, or discovered 
the way to turn it off, remained a mystery. And 
they found It still more amazing that, granted the 
knowledge of these things, a mere child should 
have had suflicient self-possession and intelligence 
to do on the second the one thing that availed to 
save them from a conflagration, which In that 
crowded tenement district might have resulted in 
Indescribable horrors. 

The boy that shut off the gas was Willie Malloy, 
and the Lady of Good Cheer felt that he was 
worth some trouble. She had tried to transplant 
him along with his sister, for she saw that the en- 




iiuyi 



Br-'^iiiiiiffii 

Photo by J. H. bemson. 

PROMPT AID TO THE INJURED 



A TWIG TRANSPLANTED 33 

vironment of Hamilton Street was rapidly trans- 
forming him. His father would not listen to the 
proposition. They needed Willie " in their busi- 
ness.'' 

The Lady of Good Cheer relieved Mrs. Mal- 
loy's distress by promising to do everything in her 
power to save him from the consequences of his 
misstep. On the day of the trial, she went to 
plead his case in court. As it was a first offence, 
he was let off on probation. But the poisonous 
soil of Hamilton Street was too powerful an ele- 
ment to be counteracted by the advice of a proba- 
tion officer. It was to her like living in the very 
shadow of death. 

In spite of the most strenuous efforts of the 
Lady of Good Cheer reinforced by the truant of- 
ficer, Willie could not be kept in school for more 
than two consecutive days. There was always 
some excuse forth-coming, and it soon became evi- 
dent that his delinquency was by orders of his 
father who found Willie's financial abilities of 
increasing value in his complicated business. 
Though utterly impervious to the mathematics of 
the school, he acquired with astonishing facility the 
less legitimate methods of addition and subtrac- 
tion in vogue in Hamilton Street, and while the 
ethical and political ideals inculcated by the School 
Reader bored him to exasperation, he was rapidly 
realising the heroic ideals of the street gang. His 
boyish countenance was acquiring the hard lines 



34 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

and the look of brutal cynicism which charac- 
terises the portraits of those distinguished person- 
ages whose likenesses are preserved in that gallery 
which his comrades regarded as the true Hall of 
Fame, — the archives of the Police Department. 

To the Lady of Good Cheer and the Probation 
Officer he always protested his virtue and diligence 
with such vividness of language and abundance of 
circumstantial detail that she could not bring her- 
self to realise the swiftness of his moral descent 
till she discovered him one day in a dark courtyard 
at the back door of a saloon, drinking mixed ale 
out of an ancient and dirty can with a gang of the 
roughest and toughest little specimens of humanity 
she had ever seen. This group of small urchins 
carousing in secret, presented such a hideous trav- 
esty on the vices of their elders, that it was long 
before she recovered from the horror of it. 

In the meantime Mamie remained in the farm- 
house, far from the attractions of Cherry Hill. 
She continued to milk the cows, feed the pigs, 
gather eggs and dig in the garden. Every Sun- 
day she drove to church some three miles away 
and stayed to Sunday-School. The good mistress 
of the farm treated her like a daughter, for 
though she loved children, she had none of her 
own. No one who saw her would have taken 
Mamie for a child of the city. In her neat dress 
and white apron, with her smooth braided hair, 
and rosy, freckled face, and fat legs and arms she 



A TWIG TRANSPLANTED 35 

looked like a true farmer's daughter. She spoke 
no more with the accent of the East Side. She 
had caught the true Yankee twang and drawl. 
Everytime the Lady of Good Cheer visited the 
country she rejoiced in her achievement. Such an 
arrangement, she felt, was almost too good to 
be true. 

The years passed and the Lady of Good Cheer 
was becoming assured that one child at least had 
been permanently saved from the influence of 
Hamilton Street, when one day the parents met 
her with a demand for the return of their daugh- 
ter. " They needed her help," they said. The 
Lady of Good Cheer thought with horror of her 
reentrance into the life of Hamilton Street and 
into that coal hole which they called home. She 
talked with the agitated scarecrow and the resent- 
ful grunting Joss, day after day, and at last ef- 
fected a compromise. Mamie should come and 
visit her father and mother, but it was to be left 
to her to decide whether she would remain or not. 
So the eventful day arrived when a fat freckled 
country maid was taken up to the city. It was 
now as unknown and exciting a land to her as the 
country had been five years before when she had 
mistaken the corded woodpile for a forest. The 
rush and bustle made her tremble. The hurdy- 
gurdies and moving picture shows and gaudy thea- 
tre posters made her thrill with excitement. The 
ride in the elevated train was one long marvel. 



36 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

Then came the walk through the crowded down 
town streets, — packed with aged Jews and scream- 
ing children, and by the time she came to the low 
basement door, she was quite bewildered. She 
went down the stairs into the black coal hole and 
saw the Joss seated in the midst of his array of 
dirty coats and hats, and staring with unblinking 
goggle eyes. She went into the dark back room 
with its foul heaps of rags, and the thin, wizened 
woman in her scarecrow garments seized her and 
embraced her. She was filled with fear and dis- 
gust and began to cry. This black malodorous 
cellar did not seem like home, nor these strange 
rag-clad creatures like a father and mother. She 
wanted to get away, — never to see them again. 
But she did not want to leave the city. She 
wanted to hear its music, to see its pictures, to visit 
its theatres, to share in its throbbing life again. 
She did not recognise the ragged lad with his thin 
pinched face when he came forward to greet her. 
Indeed, to look at them as they stood side by side, 
no one would have imagined that they came of the 
same flesh and blood or even of the same race, — 
the plump, rosy, freckled girl with her neat dress 
and slow drawl, and the sharp-faced boy, whose 
soiled clothes seemed falling to pieces, and who 
spoke the quick pungent slang of the East Side. 

It was an anxious day for the Lady of Good 
Cheer. She said all she could to prove to Mamie 
the superiority of country life, and then she had to 



A TWIG TRANSPLANTED 37 

wait while the crowding impressions of the strange 
new life made their appeal to the girl. Perhaps if 
her parents had pressed her less eagerly, she might 
have stayed. But after the cleanliness of the 
country, the embraces of the ragged woman in the 
dirty cellar were too much for her. Education at 
length triumphed over heredity when the country- 
girl in Mamie decided against the coal-hole. It 
was not until she was safe on the train that was to 
bear her back to the little country village which was 
henceforth to be her home, that the Lady of Good 
Cheer felt the strain of anxiety relax, and breathed 
a sigh of relief. She went home with the image 
of the two children still in her mind, and she 
thought to herself, " Two twigs, taken from the 
same tree ! If only the world could see and under- 
stand what can be done by transplanting and a 
little bending." 



A SONG OF EXORCISM 

The minister was just starting uptown to attend 
an important function. He had laid aside his 
usual uniform of rusty clericals, and, arrayed in 
frock coat and silk hat, and with gloves and silver- 
headed stick in hand, he presented so unaccustomed 
a figure of elegance as to elicit a prolonged stare 
from such members of the Men's Club as were 
haunting the church house steps, while O'Brien 
whispered stertorously to Rosenberg: " Say, de 
boss is off on a spree for sure, dis time! " 

The minister was accompanied by a friend from 
uptown and was in a hurry, but as he passed 
through the hall the nurse called to him. " Won't 
you come here a minute and get Mr. Halloran to 
take this medicine?" 

She was engaged in the difficult task of sobering 
off Mr. Halloran, a gallant ex-member of the 
King's Hussars. He was a most courtly person 
when sober, but that morning, being under spirit- 
ous influence, he had had an altercation with his 
wife which had ended in his chasing her from the 
house axe in hand, while he threatened her in lan- 
guage which would have terrified a cohort of 
Zulus. It was deemed unsafe to permit him to 

3? 



A SONG OF EXORCISM 39 

return home until the effect of the alcohol he had 
imbibed had been completely counteracted by suit- 
able medicaments. 

As the minister stopped, the nurse said to Hal- 
loran^ " You'll take it if the minister gives it to 
you, won't you, Mr. Halloran? " 

" Sure, I'll do anything fer his Riverence," said 
Halloran with a genial grin. He was a thin, wiry 
man with a freckled face, and a large, expressive 
Irish mouth shaded by a ragged moustache. He 
walked with the loose-jointed slouch of an ex- 
cavalryman, but there was a surprising nervous 
agility about his movements. 

As he spoke he rose from his seat behind the 
table with a sudden jerk, and bowed with exag- 
gerated courtesy. " There's no man in all the 
world that Oi love as Oi do yer Riverence," he 
added with another bow. 

The minister took the glass and pushed it to- 
ward him across the wide table. " There, Hal- 
loran, go ahead and take your medicine, that's a 
good fellow. lYou know it will do you good." 

Halloran reached but for the glass and said, 
" All right, yer Riverence." 

He took the glass in his hand, made a bow to 
the assembled company, and went on with impas- 
sioned volubility: " Why is it that I always does 
everythin' your Riverence asks me in spite o' me- 
self ? Why is it I can't resist the requests ye make 
o' me? Mr. Rainy asks me to take the medicine 



40 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

and I won't touch It; and Miss Smith asks me to 
take It, and I leaves It standing there; and the 
nurse asks me to take It, and I won't do It; — but 
when your RIverence asks me," and he bowed pro- 
foundly, '* I takes the glass," — and he lifted It to 
his lips, looked at It hard a minute, and concluded, 
— " an* I sets It down on the table again." 

With great solemnity Halloran deposited the 
glass still unquaffed on the table, while the minis- 
ter's friend from uptown shouted with laughter, 
and the nurse and her group of helpers looked 
grieved and disappointed over their humiliating 
defeat after an hour of work with the patient. 

Just then a little boy rushed In at the door, hat- 
less and breathless. He was a slim, handsome 
little fellow of about ten, with a clear complexion 
and regular features, but his face was quite pale, 
his eyes were terrified, and his hair was flying 
wildly. He ran to the minister and In an excited 
whisper, he said: "Me mommer says, 'Come 
down ter our house quick as yer can ! Me popper 
Is drinkin' an' he's took the knife to me mommer 
and she's afraid he'll kill me little brother an' sis- 
ter." 

" All right," said the minister. " Come 
along! " and he darted out of the door with the 
small boy. It was some blocks away and they ran 
at full speed through the street crowded with 
Jewish women In shawl and scheitel, with ragged 
children of all ages and sizes, with pedlars and 



A SONG OF EXORCISM 41 

pushcarts. They turned the corner Into Cather- 
ine Street, where the sidewalk was filled with 
throngs of workingmen and shop girls on their 
way to the ferry. Through the crowd they rushed, 
— the ragged, bareheaded, barefoot boy and the 
man In frock coat and top-hat. The crowd stared 
at them and supposing the small boy to be a pick- 
pocket, pursued by a stray inhabitant of Fifth Ave- 
nue, some of the more energetic joined in the chase. 
By the time they reached the foot of Catherine 
Street they had aroused quite a commotion in a 
ward always prone to excitement. 

The minister knew there was good cause to 
hurry. The MacLean family had been given over 
as a special charge to the church by the Charity 
Organisation Society. MacLean was a good 
workman and a man of respectable appearance 
and very pleasant manners. His wife was an 
Englishwoman, of quite an unusual type for that 
neighbourhood, neat In person, a fine housekeeper 
and a good mother. All would have gone well 
with them if MacLean had not been possessed of 
the Scotchman's fondness for his native beverage. 
Because of that fondness he had lost one position 
after another, and was now working as longshore- 
man. When the desire for " Old Scotch " once 
came upon him, any ordinary dose was only a tan- 
talising irritant. 

One day MacLean was assisting in unloading a 
consignment of whisky from one of the steamers. 



42 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

The job was about finished, when in some way the 
Scotchman managed to secure a bottle of the 
whisky, and drank it almost at one gulp, while the 
foreman's back was turned. How any one but a 
professional fire-swallower could stand such a test 
is a mystery still unsolved. The dose seemed to 
accelerate the activity of his lanky limbs and to 
transform him into an animated windmill. He 
collided joyously and inconsequentially with his 
fellow workmen, arousing their ire to such an ex- 
tent that he returned home with a black eye and a 
broken nose. He demanded money from his wife, 
and when she refused him, he attempted to take 
off the children's shoes, a recent gift of the Charity 
Organisation Society, to carry them to the pawn- 
brokers. The children wept and resisted, and in 
sudden rage, he picked up a carving knife from 
the table and struck at the little girl. His wife 
caught his arm and screamed. They had a des- 
perate tussle which was fortunately interrupted by 
the arrival of neighbours. Since then, Mrs. 
MacLean had lived in constant terror. 

MacLean was always full of repentance when 
he recovered, which did not prevent him from still 
more devilish behaviour on the next occasion. His 
digestive system must have been constructed of 
steel piping, for nothing seemed to put it out of 
commission. Any ordinary man would have met 
his death or reached repentance long before. 

One morning Instead of going to his work, he 



A SONG OF EXORCISM 43 

made an extensive circuit of the Cherry Street 
saloons, and discovered an individual whom, in 
spite of a dilapidated costume and a disfigured 
countenance, his alcoholic vision recognised as a 
perfect gentleman and a beloved friend. He re- 
turned home with this affectionate companion in 
quest of further funds. He found his wife absent 
and some money on the table, and he picked up a 
pail from the floor and started for the saloon. 
He should have been sufficiently acquainted with 
the habits of his tidy housewife to know that she 
did not leave pails lying about unless they were in 
Immediate use. He was in no mood for psycho- 
logical inductions, however, and promptly took the 
pail to the corner saloon and had it filled with beer. 
When he returned and dipped into the can with 
his friend, he remarked that the beer had an unusu- 
ally fine " bead," His friend also noted an espe- 
cially spicy flavour. The substance sold In the 
fourth ward under the name of beer or mixed ale 
is at best a strange compound made up with a 
basis of high wines and flavoured with various 
highly astringent chemicals, and though this par- 
ticular mixture attacked the palate In a fashion 
which seemed unusual even to MacLean, he 
only liked it the better, and the pail was soon 
drained. In a few moments his friend was lying 
on his back, screaming with agony. The neigh- 
bours rushed In, an ambulance was summoned, and 
he was carried away to the hospital In what seemed 



44 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

his death agony. At last Mrs. MacLean re- 
turned. She looked at the pail and at her husband 
and gave a gasp of horror. As she sank into a 
chair, she murmured feebly: " I was cleanin' and 
that pail was a quarter full of lye." MacLean 
stayed home from work for a day. He informed 
his anxious friends that the beer had somewhat 
overstimulated his digestion, but they found his 
cheerful spirit in no wise disturbed. 

These and similar events ran through the min- 
ister's mind as he and the urchin raced down the 
crowded street. Mrs. MacLean had been so cer- 
tain that the next time her husband drank he would 
kill her or the children, that the minister had prom- 
ised to come instantly if she summoned him. Now 
he was blaming himself for having arranged no 
more immediate help for her than such as he could 
give after running five blocks. The poor child 
with him thought his brother and sister already 
murdered, and the minister shared his fears. He 
seemed to see MacLean with his blood-stained 
knife standing over the bodies of his children — a 
raging beast whom none could tame. He sprang 
up the steps of the tenement, two at a time, while 
the startled inmates stood gaping at this apparent 
invader from Fifth Avenue, who was so evidently 
in a hurry to mount their stairs. 

The minister was about to throw open the door 
of MacLean's room when an unexpected sound 
caught his ear. It was not the curse or groan he 



A SONG OF EXORCISM 45 

had anticipated. It was a man's voice singing in 
a curious, quavering, unsteady tone. The words 
and tune sounded strangely familiar. He pushed 
the door gently open and looked in, and could 
scarcely restrain a cry of amazement. The man 
who but a moment before had been an infuriated 
brute on the verge of murder was kneeling by the 
sofa. He was dressed In his longshoreman's 
jumper and ragged trousers, with the leathern belt 
and iron hook at his waist. His tall, loose-jointed 
frame sprawled out half on the floor, half on the 
couch; and at his side knelt the Lady of Good 
Cheer In her trim suit of dark blue, one slim gloved 
hand on the back of the sofa and the other resting 
lightly on his shoulder. Together they were sing- 
ing, her clear voice rising above his uncertain, quav- 
ering bass : 

" Just as I am and waiting not 
To rid my soul of one dark blot. 
To Him whose blood can cleanse each spot, 
O Lamb of God, I come, I come." 



VI 

A TEMPORARY HUSBAND 

The Lady of Good Cheer was seated beside Mrs. 
Johnson-Schwarz in the well-furnished parlour of 
a pleasant, four-room apartment. She was at- 
tempting to say something that was comforting, 
for Mrs. Johnson-Schwarz was weeping. She was 
weeping decorously, however, and at the same time 
surveying with admiration from the corner of one 
tearful eye, her new black dress, just purchased at 
a reduction sale. The Lady of Good Cheer found 
words difficult, partly because the tragedy was so 
terrible and partly because Mrs. Johnson-Schwarz 
seemed to be enjoying her grief In so refined a 
manner. It seemed almost a sacrilege to attempt 
to change a mood which was so eminently appro- 
priate to the occasion. 

Mrs. Keturah Johnson-Schwarz was a Scotch- 
woman of medium build with a broad, freckled 
face, pale blue eyes In which lurked a canny 
shrewdness, and a mouth whose size and coarse- 
ness were forgiven because of Its fascinating mo- 
bility and variety of expression. Her open coun- 
tenance had a certain attraction, something of the 
charm that one finds In the brown face and honest 
eyes of an Intelligent fisher lad. It evidently had 

46 



A TEMPORARY HUSBAND 47. 

a peculiar fascination for men, for she had been 
several times married. If any one In the ward 
understood the proper demeanour to observe on 
the death of a husband she did. Practice had 
made her perfect. 

The Lady of Good Cheer knew little of the 
antecedents of Mrs. Johnson-Schwarz. She had 
joined the church and demonstrated that thorough 
acquaintance with the Scriptures, so characteristic 
of the Scotch. She was well trained In theology, 
and was a good critic of sermons. Her two boys, 
twelve and fourteen years old, bore the name of 
Johnson, and were the survivals of a former matri- 
monial dynasty. They had brown complexions 
and slightly kinky hair, which suggested the theory 
that the earlier dynasty had been of Nubian origin. 
On the subject of the character and fate of Mr. 
Johnson, Mrs. Johnson-Schwarz remained dis- 
creedy silent. Mr. Schwarz had been a brutal- 
faced, low-browed German, In form squat and 
Simian, and strong as a gorilla. He kept his wife 
and step-sons In constant terror, but he brought In 
good wages from his work at unloading the coal 
steamers, and even after allowing him enough for 
what he regarded as a satisfactory spree every 
Saturday night, there was still plenty to provide 
for a spacious flat and many of the luxuries. Mr. 
Schwarz hated the church and believed In nothing 
but dollars and beer. 

A few nights before this visit of the Lady of 



48 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

Good Cheer, Schwarz had gone down to finish 
unloading a great coal steamer before daybreak. 
He was standing by the revolving drum on 
which was wound the chain that hoisted many 
hundred-weight of coal from the hold below, and 
was adjusting the chain, when one of the men gave 
an unexpected signal to start the engine. The 
drum turned suddenly, catching his hand beneath 
the chain. Alarmed by his maddened screams, 
the men at last stopped the engine and reversed it. 
They picked up a limp mass of flesh and bones, 
shrieking and cursing like some fiend in torment. 
They carried him to the hospital and aroused his 
wife from her sleep. She went to the church and 
called for the minister, who did what he could to 
reassure her and to provide for Mr. Schwarz at 
the hospital. In the morning the Lady of Good 
Cheer visited him. The man lay on his cot in the 
hospital with crushed limbs and broken back, 
groaning, writhing, cursing. He had but a few 
hours to live, and she was the only one who could 
prepare this coarse, degraded brute to meet the 
terrible change which was so close at hand. He 
met her most sympathetic words with a wolfish 
snarl, her prayers with a curse; and she left him 
depressed and disheartened. She found it, there- 
fore, peculiarly hard to speak with his wife of her 
loss. Besides being incongruous, words of comi- 
fort seemed insincere. The Lady of Good Cheer 
felt that Mrs. Johnson-Schwarz would undoubt- 



A TEMPORARY HUSBAND 49 

edly miss the weekly wage, but not the man who 
had earned it. She made an end to her call as 
soon as she could, feeling baffled and incompetent 
— baffled by the tragedy of a death justly un- 
mourned, and incompetent to criticize an actress 
so well trained in her part as was Mrs. Johnson- 
Schwarz. 

Some months later the Lady of Good Cheer 
called upon the widow in the humble quarters into 
which she had moved after the death of her hus- 
band. 

" Oh, I'm so glad youVe come," said Mrs. 
Johnson-Schwarz. " I was just coming to the 
church to ask if you could do anything for this 
here young man." 

She pointed to a man seated in the next room. 
He was clothed in a loose ragged coat and trousers 
that seemed ready to disintegrate. He had no 
shirt or collar. His shoes were worn through 
and showed more holes and naked feet than 
leather. 

" Come here," she called. " I want to intro- 
duce you to this lady. What's your name anyway? 
I can't remember it." 

The man rose, six feet three, vigorous in flesh 
and blood. Yellow curls clustered around his high 
white forehead. His features were regular and 
strikingly handsome, and a small golden moustache 
curled over his full red lips. He clicked his ragged 
heels together and bowed profoundly. 



50 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

" Braunberg-Lichtenstein, bitte," he said. " I 
speak not very gut English," he added. 

" I found him lying in the hallway downstairs 
last night," said the widow. " He'd crept in out 
of the rain, and I brought him in and gave him 
a bed and something to eat, and I thought per- 
haps you could get some work for him up at the 
church." 

The Lady of Good Cheer looked at him closely. 
" How did you get into such trouble? " she asked. 
" You don't look like a tramp or a beggar." 

*' Ach, madam," he said, ^' it make me ashame 
so to speak mit you. Mein Vater ist Prediger — 
how you say? — preacher? — in Deutschland, und 
mein Onkel, he has so ein Schloss — a big house — • 
und money, very much money. I vas Offizier in 
der Deutsche army, but I haf very much money 
spent. Mein Vater, he vas angry mit mir. He 
say, * Go vay. I nefer see you no more.' Now 
ist mein Onkel dead, und he has much, much money 
left to me, but I cannot go. I haf no money, no 
friend." 

He spoke with many gestures and a play of ex- 
pression which was more illuminating than his lan- 
guage. The Lady of Good Cheer asked him to 
come to the Employment Bureau at the church, 
and suggested that he consult a lawyer as to secur- 
ing his property. It was evident that what he said 
was partly true. He was undoubtedly a young 
German officer of good social position — every 



A TEMPORARY HUSBAND 51 

movement of the man verified so much of his 
story. The true cause of his disgrace, however, 
might well have been suppressed. 

A few weeks later, while the Lady of Good 
Cheer was busy with her reports at the church, 
the sexton knocked at the door of her office. In 
answer to her *' Come In! " he said: " Say, that 
there Mrs. Schwarz, the mother of them two 
kInk-headed kids, you know. Is out there, with the 
swellest young gazabo I ever see In the old fourth 
ward. He's a peach, a regular fairy, I'm 
thinkin'." 

" Oh, It must be that young German she took 
In," said the Lady of Good Cheer. 

" There's something on the boards fer fair," 
he went on. " She's rigged up ter kill, and there's 
a look In her eye, — well, you just take a peep at 
her yourself," and the sexton rubbed his stubby 
chin, and his mouth expanded In a reminiscent grin. 

Sure enough, there sat Mrs. Johnson-Schwarz 
In a new dress, black out of deference to the de- 
parted, but relieved with many flounces and fugi- 
tive dashes of colour. A huge feather on an 
enormous hat waved over her freckled face. 
She was blushing coyly, and was studying the 
floor, save when she cast an occasional swift 
glance at the man beside her. He was dressed 
neatly and fashionably, almost as any young Ger- 
man attache of the legation might be. He wore 
a well-fitting cutaway coat, and there was a carna- 



52 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

tlon in his buttonhole. His linen was spotless, 
and his tie, gloves and socks were of harmonious 
shades. He might easily have been a selfpos- 
sessed foreign gentleman of position. The sim- 
pering, freckle-faced Scotch working-woman at 
his side, overwhelmed with the consciousness of 
her waving plumes and gorgeous apparel, pre- 
sented a singular contrast. 

" Can I speak with you a minute, in private? " 
she asked. 

The Lady of Good Cheer took her into the 
office and then the widow said: " Me and him's 
goin' to get married. I s^pose you think it's too 
soon and all that, but he's been stayin' in my house 
some weeks now, and the neighbours is beginnin' 
to talk, and the best we can do is to stop their 
mouths right away quick." 

The Lady of Good Cheer looked at her aghast. 
She felt that such a match must prove utterly dis- 
astrous. At length she managed to say, " But he 
is so young. Do you think you will get on well 
together?" 

" Oh, I ain't so terrible old as all that," she 
answered coyly. " And then the boys needs a man 
in the house to manage 'em. I can't do a thing 
with 'em, no more." 

" But you don't know anything about him," pro- 
tested the Lady of Good Cheer. " Wouldn't it 
be wiser to wait until you know if his story is 
true?" 



A TEMPORARY HUSBAND 53 

" Oh, I'm goin' to pay for a lawyer and weVe 
goln' to get that money. It's all true fast enough. 
I've seen his letters and he's got rich enough rela- 
tions over there." 

Arguments had no effect on the woman. Be- 
sides the fact that she was entirely bewitched with 
the handsome young foreigner, and had spent a 
good share of her savings in fitting him out, there 
was a canny Scotch scheme behind the fondness of 
the amorous widow. She had her eye on the for- 
tune in Germany. 

When the minister came down that evening 
there were several visitors waiting for him. The 
first was a shy maiden, somewhat advanced in 
years for the coyness of her demeanour, clad in 
gay but ill-fitting garments, and wearing a hat sur- 
mounted by a scarlet plume. 

" I come to see would you marry us," she said, 
as she cast down her eyes and tried to blush. 
" Me feller had orter 'avc come but he's a terrible 
shy feller, so I had ter ax you meself." 

" When do you want to be married? " asked the 
minister. 

" To-night at ten o'clock," she answered. 

"To-night I" he exclaimed. "That is rush- 
ing things too much. Marriage is a serious busi- 
ness. It is something you should think over and 
plan about. I never marry people in that fash- 
ion, at a moment's notice." 

" But my feller is a sailor, and his ship sails to- 



54 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

morrow morning," she said. " So we've got ter 
get married to-night.'* 

" Then you should have come and told me last 
week," said the minister. 

" I do not often marry any one out of the parish, 
and when I do, I want good notice of the marriage 
given so that everything can be done in regular 
form. Why didn't you let me know before? " 

The maiden blushed and looked down. " He 
only axed me ten minutes ago, an' I come as quick 
as I could," she said. 

The minister succeeded in recovering a serious 
expression before she looked up. " I'm afraid I 
can't help you out," he said. " It's against my 
rules to perform a marriage of that sort. There's 
a sailors' church not far from here. Go down 
there and perhaps you can get the clergyman to 
marry you." 

The maiden went out regretfully, and Mr. 
Braunberg-Lichtenstein entered. He bowed with 
an air of distinction that would have become a 
duke. " Vill you haf the kindness to do me a 
great service?" he said. "Mrs. Schwarz and I 
vill get married, if you be so kind." 

" Mrs. Schwarz I " cried the minister. " You 
wish to marry Mrs. Schwarz ! " 

" Yes, sle ist vary gut to mir and I haf decided 
to marry me with her." 

** But have you thought it over carefully? She 
Is much older than you; she belongs to another 



A TEMPORARY HUSBAND 55 

race. Do you think you will be happy togeth- 



er?" 



" Yes, I tink, I like her vary mooch." 

The minister did all he could to convince the 
German that the match would be an unfortunate 
one, but his words were useless. The strange 
couple had made up their minds. 

Before many days had passed, the widow ar- 
rayed in a bridal dress adorned with many 
flowers, stood proudly by the side of the elegant 
young German officer, and became by sanction of 
the law Mrs. Johnson-Schwarz-Braunberg-Lichten- 
stein. 

It was some weeks later that she sought the 
Lady of Good Cheer in much agitation, hatless 
and dishevelled. 

" My husband! " she cried. " He is gone! I 
can't find him anywhere I " 

"What?" cried the Lady of Good Cheer. 
"What has happened?" 

" Well, you see he's been going uptown every 
day, and he told me he had work in a restaurant 
in 42nd Street. But he kept askin' me for money, 
and tellin' me he couldn't get no pay till Saturday. 
An' I thinks to meself, * There's somethin' queer 
about this business,' and Saturday I puts on me hat. 
and up I goes to the restaurant. Never a sign of 
Hans could I find, and what's more, they'd never 
even heard of him. And thinks I, 'There's a 
woman at the bottom of this and I'll find out about 



56 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

It yet.' When he comes home he gives me a song 
and dance about their not payin' off till Monday 
after all, and he wants some money to fix up for 
Sunday, So I gives him a dollar and thinks I, 
* I'll catch you this time.' Well, Sunday evenin' 
he says, * I think I'll go up town to the Madison 
Square Church to-night.' And I says, * All right.' 
An when he goes, I slips on me hat and follows 
him. He stops at a flower store and buys a bou- 
quet, arid I thinks, * Now I'll get you for sure.' 
Well, he takes the elevated uptown, and I slips in 
behind without him seein' me. Sure enough he 
got out at 23rd Street, and I followed him over 
to Madison Square, and in he goes to the church. 
Well, I begun to think I was fooled, but I went in 
too. He met a swell young feller there and the 
two of 'em sat together. I waited till after the 
service, and he comes out with the young man and 
they walks up Fifth Av'noo, arm in arm together, 
him with his bouquet still in his hand. They turns 
Into 35 th Street, and walks to a house half down 
the block and goes in. Well, It was cold and be- 
ginnln' to rain, but I went across the street and 
leaned up against a rallln' and waited. In about 
an hour he comes out, without the flowers, and he 
walks over to the L very quick. I follows him. 
He got out at Chatham Square, and started to 
walk home. It was late then, pretty near mid- 
night, and I comes up behind him, sudden like, and 
takes him by the arm and says, kind of quiet like : 



A TEMPORARY HUSBAND 57 

* What did ye do with them flowers? ' Well, he 
jumped. He was some surprised, I tell you. 

* Yes,' I says, ' I saw you go into that house in 
35th Street. What did ye do with them flowers? ' 

* I give them to a gentleman friend of mine,' he 
says. * Go on,' says I. * Don't tell me no lies ! 
You've been lyin' to me straight every day. You 
ain't been to work at no restaurant. Here I've 
took all me savin's to fix you up, and I've give you 
money every day and you go a spendin' of it on 
flowers fer some woman up town, and give me a 
handful of lies about workin' and gettin' your pay. 
Now you've got to cut it out and get to work, or 
there'll be trouble.' Well he says there wan't 
no woman and he left the flowers with a gentle- 
man friend and he's goin' to work Monday. 
And this morning he's gone with all the spare cash 
in the house, and I can't find a trace of him no- 
where." 

Indeed, Mr. Braunberg-Lichtenstein proved to 
be as irrevocably lost as any of the previous incum- 
bents whose name the much-married woman had 
borne, and who had been snatched from her by the 
hand of death. Her grief over his departure, 
though less decorously expressed, was possibly 
more poignant than that which she had felt for 
Mr. Schwarz. To do her justice, however, it 
should be stated that she sorrowed, not so much 
because he was lost, as because he had ever been 
found. She sought to eliminate every trace of his 



58 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

incumbency from her mental horizon, and so, em- 
bittered by her fourfold widowhood, she ruthlessly 
cut off the two latest additions to her cognomen, 
although she had borne them for a month with 
great pride. Thenceforward only those who were 
willing to face a whirlwind of vituperation ven- 
tured to salute her as Mrs. Johnson-Schwarz 
Braunberg-Lichtenstein. It was possibly in the 
effort to acquire a clear and unencumbered title 
that in the spring she married a man with the 
simple name of Smith. 






VII 

THE GREY DRESS 

" Hey, Tim ! git on ter de fancy washerlady deyVe 
got in dis yere pallis I " shouted a ragged youngster 
with a bundle of papers under his arm. He had 
just deposited one of them in a narrow court sur- 
rounded on all sides by the tall tenements of 
Cherry Hill. At his summons Tim's mop of tow- 
coloured hair appeared at the opening of the tun- 
nel-like passage beneath the tenements which was 
the sole entrance to the court. Like the typical 
New York newsboy that he was, Tim expressed 
his quick appreciation of the crux of a dilemma by 
shouting: "Get a wife! Get a wife!" In a 
moment both boys had vanished through the tunnel 
as swiftly as they appeared. The " Washerlady " 
thus saluted straightened herself with some dif- 
ficulty and stood erect by her tubs with lather 
covered arms, and as she turned, the newsboy's 
jeer was readily explained. The quick eyes of the 
urchin had seen the face whose large drooping 
moustaches indicated that this was no woman, but 
a man arrayed in a long apron. 

A more serious person than the newsboy might 
well have smiled at the pathetic incongruity of this 
round masculine countenance above the foaming 

59 



6o BESIDE THE BOWERY 

tubs. The face had been that of a rubicund, snub- 
nosed, Teutonic peasant, but hunger and sickness 
had left a pale shadow on the ruddy cheeks, so that 
he looked like an old Franz Hals over whose vivid 
tones some unfeeling hand had put a coat of white- 
wash. He was about to dive into his suds again 
after his interruption, when a sound came to him 
from the open window of the tumble-down rear 
house behind him, and shaking the lather from his 
hands, he turned and hurried in at the open door. 
On the broken lounge by the window lay the frail 
figure of a woman. Her face was ghastly pale. 
Her hand clutched her breast, and beneath it a 
red stain was spreading over the white kerchief. 
He stood for a moment silent, his piglike little 
eyes wide and staring, seeing nothing but the white 
face and the scarlet stain. He groaned, and she 
turned and saw him. She hid her face quickly 
so that it should not tell him the depths of her 
suffering. 

" Never mind me," she said. '* You must finish 
them napkins or we'll lose the job." 

The man stood watching her a moment, breath- 
ing heavily with an asthmatic wheeze. His pale 
blue eyes filled and a drop trickled down his red 
nose. Then he shook his head slowly, turned and 
went out, and without a word plunged once more 
into the lather, wheezing and groaning like a de- 
crepit donkey engine as he worked. 

Then the Lady of Good Cheer found them. 



THE GREY DRESS 6i 

She could not restrain a smile as her eyes fell upon 
the grotesque " washerlady," but her ready sym- 
pathy soon detected the tragedy behind the appar- 
ent farce. She had soon found her way to the 
bedside of the wife and was doing what she could 
to relieve her paroxysms of pain. The poor 
woman was more anxious about her napkins than 
about herself. She and her husband lived upon 
the income she derived from her position as wash- 
erwoman for a Bowery restaurant. It was an in- 
come that to the sick woman seemed truly munifi- 
cent. She received ten cents a hundred for the 
napkins she washed. Now she would forfeit her 
position if they were not ready on time, and she 
would undoubtedly have been more at ease if the 
Lady of Good Cheer had deserted her to attend 
to the napkins. Her one Idea seemed to be to 
make her visitor appreciate her husband's efforts 
at the tubs, and the devotion he showed in doing 
a woman's work for the sake of keeping her posi- 
tion. 

The Lady of Good Cheer assured her that the 
napkins would be finished on time, and she 
breathed a sigh of relief. She was sure that at 
last she had the ear of a woman who would under- 
stand, and began to tell all the anxieties and wor- 
ries that for want of outlet had been eating into 
her lonely soul. The forlorn pair had had a son 
who had found riches in America and had sent to 
Germany for his parents. When they arrived in 



62 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

the new land, he had strangely disappeared. She 
thought him dead and she and her husband had 
ever since been struggling desperately for a liveli- 
hood, sinking lower and lower as the man became 
crippled with rheumatism and helpless with asthma. 
The woman seemed to find the relief that comes 
from opening a long festering wound as she poured 
out a story of their despair and shame. Months 
of sickness and poverty had been made wretched 
and shameful by drinking and quarrelling In this 
miserable environment. At home they had been 
honest, industrious folk; they had done their duty 
by God and their neighbour. But here in their 
loneliness and want they had lost all faith and all 
hope. They drank to forget, and little by little 
they sank to the level of the degraded life about 
them. 

When the Lady of Good Cheer went away, she 
left behind her the confidence that somehow life 
would be better now. She sent in food and a 
nurse, but the reports she received were not en- 
couraging. The poor woman was in the grip of 
a deadly disease from which all escape seemed 
hopeless. Everything possible was done to re- 
lieve her, and for a short time she was able to re- 
turn to her tub. The Lady of Good Cheer visited 
her constantly and watched her anxiously, but 
hardly a month had passed when she found Mrs. 
Reichert lying almost unconscious at her work with 
the red stain again upon the kerchief at her breast. 



THE GREY DRESS 63 

When the Lady of Good Cheer spoke of the 
hospital, she shook her head. In broken words 
and gasps she explained that she could not leave 
her home. 

" Dese mens! vot can dey do by demselves? " 
she asked. " Yen I leaf him my man was like a 
shicken mitout no head, already! '* and she smiled 
a little in spite of her pain. 

The washerwoman was deaf to all persuasion. 
That work at the tub in front of the dilapidated 
rear tenement was to her a solemn trust. She felt 
that there the battle for her home and her husband 
and her self-respect must be fought out. 

As the Lady of Good Cheer later told the story 
of this pale and wrinkled old woman with her torn 
skirts looped up in her assault upon a foaming 
wash-tub full of cheap napkins, there was an epic 
quality in the account that was truly Homeric. 
Day after day the woman stood at her post. Day 
after day she rubbed away, gritting her yellow, 
broken teeth that she might not scream with the 
pain, and seeking to hide from her husband the 
red stain on her breast that was always growing 
larger. All the while the terrible disease was eat- 
ing her life away, and she knew that certain defeat 
was hemming her in, a defeat that she would not 
acknowledge till the last drop of blood was shed. 

It was a few months later that the Lady of 
Good Cheer entered the dark little room in the 
rear tenement and found Mrs. Reichert lying on 



64 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

the bed with a pile of napkins beside her and sob- 
bing brokenly because she was too weak to stand. 
" Now you must let me take care of you," said the 
Lady of Good Cheer. " I have found a nice 
home which is not a hospital where you will receive 
the treatment you need, and I have found another 
pleasant home where they will take care of your 
husband, so you need not be anxious about him." 

Because she could no longer stand at her post, 
she suffered the Lady of Good Cheer to take her 
away to the house of Sister Rose. Sister Rose 
was a fine-spirited and self-sacrificing woman, who 
had taken this house in the most wretched street 
in the city, and had transformed a spot of ugliness 
and filth into a place of comfort and charm. Now 
she had opened its doors to any of the unfortu- 
nates in the neighbourhood upon whom the deadly 
disease had laid its hand. There they might stay 
in pretty airy surroundings with tenderest care un- 
til the end came. 

In this place of rest the washerwoman was to 
live through what remained of her struggle. The 
old man was sent to a pleasant home not far away, 
where every day he could work in the flower gar- 
den as he loved to do, or sit under the trees and 
smoke his pipe. The Lady of Good Cheer visited 
them both many times, and her visits were the 
events to which they looked forward through the 
monotony of uneventful days. 

Through the long months the woman lay on her 



THE GREY DRESS 65 

bed of torture, waiting the end that she knew must 
come soon. She did not complain. She was used 
to hardship, and her gratitude for the little serv- 
ices that were rendered her was pathetic. Slowly 
she grew feebler until at last she saw that she could 
not endure many more days of pain. She sent for 
the Lady of Good Cheer. Her visitor took the 
sick woman^s hand, and felt a half-timid anxiety in 
her eyes, and a nervous self-consciousness about her 
that was a new and unexpected element In her 
simple straightforward character. 

" You wanted me? What can I do for you? " 
asked the Lady of Good Cheer. 

The sick woman seemed to be struggling for 
courage to speak. " You vas always so gut by 
me. Vill you do von ting yet? Ven I'm gone,'* 
she went on unsteadily, " ven I'm tet, you know, 
vill you tend to eferyting for me? Mein man iss 
fery veak. He can do notlngs. Dere vill be 
plenty moneys, von mein Insurance. I haf it al- 
ways paid; efen ven ve haf no food." 

" Of course, I will attend to everything," said 
the Lady of Good Cheer. 

But this did not seem to relieve the sick woman. 
Her nervousness increased, and a faint flush ap- 
peared on her pale cheek. 

" What Is it? " asked the Lady of Good Cheer 
gently. " What else can I do? " 

*' I'm afralt you tink me terrible foolish. Und 
maybe It vas wrong already." 



66 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

" Tell me what it Is," said the Lady of Good 
Cheer. 

The flush deepened. She looked down and 
fingered the bedclothes. " Veil," she started, and 
then broke off suddenly — " Oh, it is so foolish, I 
got ashame to tell I I vant so much a new dress, 
not black and sad; I want a grey dress, all pretty 
mit little lacings like I see Miss Schmidt haf. 
You tink It iss bad already, ven you take some In- 
surance money and buy dot dress? I vant so long 
a grey dress," she went on apologetically, " efer 
since we vas married already. I safe moneys time 
and time again. Ef ery time, my man he took sick, 
or he lose his vork, and I must take dose moneys 
for him. Now he don't vant no moneys. You 
tink it fery wrong, I haf dot grey dress after I vas 
tet?" 

The Lady of Good Cheer gasped with astonish- 
ment. She had thought she understood this little 
woman, but here was a new bit of self-revelation. 
That within the imagination of this forlorn figure, 
with Its torn pinned-up skirts, should have been 
hidden a vision of feminine vanities seemed a para- 
dox too absurd to be real. The Lady of Good 
Cheer had appreciated the courage of the woman 
as she toiled at her tubs through all those days of 
cruel suffering; she had supplied her with food and 
the necessities of life, and it had not occurred to 
her that there could be in the heart of this worn 



THE GREY DRESS 67 

struggling creature a desire for anything save the 
crude essentials of life. And yet, all the while 
that she toiled at the tubs, gaunt, dishevelled, 
ragged, with raw, blistered hands and white, 
drawn face, she had not been merely one of the 
suffering proletariat, poverty-stricken in imagina- 
tion as well as in estate. She had been a woman, 
who longed to dress up in pretty clothes and be 
admired by the only man in the world whose opin- 
ion mattered. All through those days of cruel 
toil she had actually been planning how she could 
save enough to buy one pretty dress. She had 
thought it all out, — how she would put it on 
when her husband was out, and smooth her hair, 
and fasten a bow at her throat. When he came 
back how surprised he would look! She would 
see the old light in his eyes and perhaps he would 
say, " Ach Lena, wie schon bist du ! '' But that 
dream had never come true. Each time when 
the money was almost saved, sickness came and 
she was compelled to draw on the little fund of 
her heart's desire to provide food and comforts 
for her husband. The pathos of the little 
woman's life came with new keenness to the Lady 
of Good Cheer, and the impulse to smile died 
away In her heart, a sudden sob seemed to catch 
in her throat. 

In the meantime, the sick woman was looking 
at her visitor anxiously, and at last the Lady of 



68 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

Good Cheer found voice to say, " Indeed It is right 
for you to have the grey dress, and I promise you 
that you shall wear it as you wish." 

A shy smile came over the worn face, and she 
reached out her thin hand and clasped the hand of 
the Lady of Good Cheer. 

'' Thank you," she said. " That makes me so 
happy. You understand, don't you?" 

The Lady of Good Cheer kept her promise. 
W-Tien at last rest came to the frail form that had 
been wounded and torn so terribly by the shatter- 
ing blows of circumstance, the Lady of Good 
Cheer folded the sad hands, cracked and worn by 
hard toil and faithful service, over the bosom of 
the grey dress. She was surprised to see what a 
charm there was about the frail little figure In the 
graceful folds of soft stuff that hid all the unlovely 
angular lines, and it seemed to her that a shy smile 
lingered about the lips with the wistful question: 
" Will he think that I look pretty now? " 

As she lay there, a knock came at the door. 
The old man stood on the threshold with his hands 
full of beautiful chrysanthemums. " How is she 
to-day? " he asked. They told him the sad news. 
He said brokenly: "Tod! Sle ist tod! But 
dese flowers — vot can I do mit diesen Blumen? 
I haf planted dem de first day as I come to dot 
home. She luf dem flowers so mooch. Efery 
day I watch dem, an' I say, * Soon I bring dem 



THE GREY DRESS 69 

mit to her.' Dey vas shoost for her. To-day dey 
vas ready, und I bring dem quick, und now — " 
and he hid his face behind the blossoms. 

They told him to lay the flowers gently on the 
folds of the grey dress, and the old man turned 
away comforted. " She look so happy,'' he said. 
" I tink she know I bring dem flowers." 

The next week, when the Lady of Good Cheer 

gathered her group of mothers as usual at the 

appointed hour, one of the women rose. " I went 

to see Mrs. Reichert at Sister Rose's house just 

the day before she died," she said, " and she says 

to me, * Will you do something for me when I'm 

gone, Mrs. Mack? ' says she; and I says, * You'll 

not be goin' for a long time yet, Mrs. Reichert.' 

And she says, * Yes, I'm goin'. Last night I was 

sleepin' and I heard some one callin' me. I looked 

up and — Oh ! I can't tell you all I seen I But 

He was there; and He says, "Come," with His 

hand stretched out to me just like the picture. 

And it's all right, and I'm so happy! It's all the 

Lady of Good Cheer,' she says, * if it hadn't been 

for her, I don't know what would have become of 

me ! I've tried to thank her, but I can't. I feel 

so foolish when she's lookin' at me. I've been 

thinkin' and thinkin' how I can thank her, and I 

want you to go to the meeting, and when it's time 

for the verses, you tell them you've got a verse 

to read for me. I think she'd like a verse better 



70 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

than anything, just as if I was there in my place 
at the meeting. And then,' says she, * you say to 
the Lady of Good Cheer: " Inasmuch as ye did 
it unto the least of these, ye did it unto Me.' 



n > }> 



VIII 

A LOST SOUL 

The Lady of Good Cheer stood hesitating in 
front of a strange building on the corner of Ham- 
ilton Street. The building was locally known as 
" The Ship." This appellation, though appar- 
ently innocent, had not sufficed to give the house 
a good name in the neighbourhood, for its nauti- 
cal associations were piratical rather than com- 
mercial. Hitherto the Lady of Good Cheer had 
passed by the house as a place of ill omen, and it 
had taken a special invitation to bring her to its 
doors. The day before, when she was out on 
her round of calls, she had encountered a figure 
so extraordinary and quaint that it seemed to 
have been cut from some old time story book. 
An ancient dame, bent almost double and lean- 
ing on a heavy cane, came hobbling towards her, 
and screwing her head sideways, had peered up 
at her and begged for alms. Her face was deeply 
wrinkled; a long nose and projecting chin threat- 
ened to meet over her sunken mouth and thick lips. 
Her hair beneath the queer peaked bonnet, was 
snowy white, and with her short skirt, black apron 
and buckled shoes, she was so exactly the figure of 
which every child has dreamed, that the Lady of 

71 



72 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

Good Cheer would scarcely have been surprised 
if she had flown away on a broomstick. The 
Lady of Good Cheer gave no alms, but asked the 
old dame for her address, and promised to call 
and see if she could render any service. When 
she looked up the number given her, she found 
herself in front of " The Ship." 

" The Ship " was a most surprising building to 
encounter in the centre of a great modern city. 
It was situated on one of the narrowest, darkest 
lanes in the ward. All that could be seen of it 
from the street was a low battered wall, with here 
and there a shattered window, and above an inco- 
herent jumble of roofs of different lengths and 
styles, and with a multitude of angles. 

The Lady of Good Cheer made an end of hesi- 
tation by entering the low wooden door, and pass- 
ing through a narrow, crooked hall into a quaint 
old court paved with stone. It was doubtless 
from this court that the building derived its name, 
though there was a tradition that the name was 
due to the fact that it had been built from the 
timbers of a ship. A low gallery surrounded the 
court at about the height of a man's head. It was 
roofed over and railed in like a ship's deck, and 
upon it opened a row of doors like so many cabins. 
A number of crooked companionways led up to 
this balcony, and from it on to other galleries and 
half floors, for only a few square feet of the ram- 
shackle building seemed to be on one level. To 



A LOST SOUL 73 

get anywhere, one had to go up two steps or to 
go down three steps. Inside the halls were so 
narrow and crooked and dark and the stairs so 
winding and broken that it seemed like a veritable 
labyrinth. The building was all of wood and in 
order to increase the rent, one room after another 
had been added on, like patches on an old gar- 
ment. Every possible corner had been roofed in, 
every available nook projected into a room, and 
every tiny room was occupied by a large family. 
The court of the balconies or main hatch was full 
of ragged little imps and disreputable hags, and 
at night screams and cnrses echoed from the dry 
old rafters and reverberated in the black winding 
halls, till it seemed like some ancient hulk haunted 
by demons and filled with tortured souls. 

The Lady of Good Cheer looked about the 
dark court-yard for some traces of the old woman. 
Underneath the balcony was a row of doors the 
bottoms of which were below the level of the stone 
court, and little flights of broken steps led down 
to the cellar rooms into which they opened. 
These rooms were all occupied by families who 
paid a cheap rent of only four or five dollars a 
month. The Lady of Good Cheer descended 
one of these flights of steps and knocked at the 
door. She entered a damp room dimly lighted 
by one window beneath the balcony. There was 
the usual necessary furniture, a stove, a table, 
two chairs, an old wardrobe, and in a tiny adjoin- 



74 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

ing closet, a bed. In a dilapidated rocking-chair 
the old crone sat, bending forward and leaning 
her folded hands on her stick. In the dim light 
little of her face was visible save the long, hooked 
nose and projecting chin, and a glimmer of silver 
hair. She mumbled a greeting with toothless 
jaws; the Lady of Good Cheer felt more than 
ever that she was playing a leading role in some 
drama of enchantment. 

"How are you getting on, Mrs. Wiggins?" 
she asked cheerily. 

" Not so well now, Mum. Things is werry 
bad with me now. You wouldn't think to look at 
me that my cousin is Lord Treasurer of the Do- 
minion of Canada, would you? But he is, and 
he's werry good to me. He sends me a letter 
with a check every now and then. Here's one 
now with the crown and all on it." 

She handed the Lady of Good Cheer the letter 
with the insignia of a well known family upon it. 
The letter was a kindly one expressing a desire 
to do something for a poor and distant relative 
who apparently had no real claim. 

" How did you get Into such trouble, if you be- 
long to such a good family? " asked the Lady of 
Good Cheer, sympathetically. 

The old woman lifted her head a little, and 
with her little eyes blinking behind thick glasses 
and a crooked forefinger extended, she croaked: 
" Strange things happen in this world," she said. 



A LOST SOUL 75 

" Things you wouldn't never believe," and her 
voice sunk to a hoarse whisper. 

Just at that moment from the dark recesses of 
the room came a low moan. It was so uncanny 
and unexpected that the Lady of Good Cheer 
started involuntarily. 

" What is that? " she cried. 

" Oh, that's nothing," said the old woman. *' I 
often hear that. Yes, yes, there's a lot o' trouble 
in this world, and them that's rich never knows 
how they'll end." 

Just then came another groan so forlorn and so 
desperate that the Lady of Good Cheer sprang 
to her feet. 

" There is something in this room ! " she cried. 

" Yes,'' said the old woman cautiously, " per- 
haps there is." 

The moan came again, this time unmistakable: 
" I'm lost! I'm lost! " it wailed. 

The Lady of Good Cheer stepped swiftly to- 
ward the wardrobe in the dark corner. The tall 
chest was so narrow it seemed impossible that any 
human being could be hiding there. She seized 
the handle of the wardrobe door, and was about 
to throw it wide open, when suddenly some unseen 
force snatched the door from her grasp and closed 
it with a bang. 

She felt a real thrill of horror. To feel a door 
torn from one's hands by an unknown agency is 
enough to make the flesh creep. The Lady of 



76 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

Good Cheer was not superstitious, and as she 
stood there in the black corner, ghostly fright soon 
changed to a more serious fear. Was this old 
crone really concealing some crime in her dark cel- 
lar? What wretched creature was imprisoned 
here in the darkness? All manner of horrible 
possibilities rose before her as she struggled with 
the door, while the old woman still rocked on and 
mumbled. The chill of the damp cellar seemed 
to creep over her as she felt the door resist her 
renewed effort to fling it open. It seemed as if 
some blood-curdling nightmare were making itself 
real before her eyes. What awful Thing was 
behind that door? It scarcely seemed possible 
that it was human. The Lady of Good Cheer 
had no place in her mind for superstitious fears, 
and refused to be daunted by hideous realities. 
She gave a final tug at the door. It gave way, 
and she sprang back in sudden horror. There, 
all huddled in a heap In the dark bottom of the 
wardrobe, she could just distinguish a human body, 
unclothed, smeared with dirt and partly covered 
by long tangled hair. But before she could cry 
out, the body, wedged in the narrow space, moved 
and seemed about to sit up. She saw under the 
tangle of hair the glint of two eyes fixed upon her, 
and she heard a low, moaning wail. " Let me 
alone I " the Thing cried. " I'm lost! '' 

It took but a moment for the Lady of Good 
Cheer to recover from the shock of her discovery, 



A LOST SOUL 77 

and to realise that this was no hallucination but a 
tragic reality, a human creature in distress. She 
turned to the old woman in indignation. " What 
is this? " she asked. 

" Hush ! " answered the woman in a whisper. 
" It's my sister, Violet. She's not right here," 
and she pointed to her head. " Come away: you 
can't do anything. She thinks she's done wrong, 
and that her soul is lost, poor thing ! " 

The door was suddenly shut again, and again 
that wail sounded: " I'm lost! I'm lost! " 

The Lady of Good Cheer knelt by the wardrobe 
door, and tried to calm the wretched creature 
within. As a mother would speak to a terrified 
child, she sought to soothe the pain of the tortured 
soul. Her only answer was a broken, hopeless 
sob. The poor brain was too muddled to grasp 
the meaning of her words. It only understood 
in some vague way the thrill of sympathy in the 
voice, and felt that here was a friend. 

After a time the nurse, whom the Lady of 
Good Cheer sent in to look after the unfortunate 
Violet, succeeded in placing the woman in a home 
where she received proper care. Mrs. Wiggins 
bitterly resented all attempts to place her in an 
Old Ladies' Home, and " stuck to ' The Ship ' " 
with true Anglo-Saxon stubbornness. Violet 
slowly regained her mind, but the old lady died in 
the damp, dirty corner of the house of many ga- 
bles and angles and windings that had been so ap- 



78 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

propriate a setting for her while she lived. 
" The Ship " itself was finally torn down. The 
Lady of Good Cheer many times recalled the shock 
of horror she received on her first visit to the 
place, as she watched the queer courts and ancient 
roofs give way before a huge modern tenement, 
whose cheaply ornamented walls of yellow brick 
were hideous enough to drive the old-style hob- 
goblins from the neighbourhood forever. 



IX 

THE LOST BATTLE 

The Lady of Good Cheer and the minister with 
several members of the choir were scaling the dark 
stairway of a Catherine Street tenement. 

^' I hope Mr. Schweizer won't make any trou- 
ble," she said. *' He hates the church and all 
religious services, but Mrs. Schweizer was so anx- 
ious to have a service before her little boy was bur- 
ied that I told her we would come. Mr. Schweizer 
has been drinking and I am afraid he may be dis- 
agreeable. He treats her terribly. I know he 
struck her only the other day." 

They knocked at a door on the third floor and 
entered a pretty little apartment where a number 
of people were assembled. They were grouped 
about a table, on which lay a tiny coffin banked 
with flowers. As they entered a short man with 
a heavy jaw and black moustache stepped forward. 

"What's this?" he cried thickly. ''I don't 
want none of your psalm-singing in here I Get 
out, all of you ! " 

" Oh, Fritz ! " called a soft voice from behind, 
** don't talk like that ! I asked them to come. I 
won't let little Henry be carried away and buried 
without a prayer — it's heathen. Come now! 

79 



8o BESIDE THE BOWERY 

YouVe had your way in everything. Let me do 
what I want with my own child." 

A slender, graceful woman, scarce more than a 
girl, stepped up beside him. There was a deli- 
cate piquancy about the face beneath its heavy 
black veil that made one start and wonder if per- 
haps some fair flower from the Court of Ver- 
sailles had stepped upon a magic carpet and been 
carried away and hidden in this tenement. There 
was an exquisite daintiness about her, in the poise 
of her head, in the shell pink colouring of her 
cheek, in the coquettish coil of her gold-brown 
hair, and in the delicate chiseling of her red lips, 
that made her seem most out of place here among 
the tenements. The refinement of her appear- 
ance was startlingly emphasised as she stood beside 
the intoxicated man with his sodden features, and 
tried to smother his raucous curses with her swift 
words. It was a strange conflict, that of this frag- 
ile and delicate girl mother with the drunken 
brute of a father over the tiny baby form that lay 
there embowered in roses. The man was deaf to 
the sacred appeal of the moment and insensible to 
common decency, but she won the day. There 
was a compelling nobility about her which even he 
could not resist, and before he knew it, he found 
himself shifted dexterously to the background, 
while she was saying to the minister: '^ Don't 
mind him I He doesn't know what he is saying. 
I'm sorry he was so rude." 



THE LOST BATTLE 8i 

In another moment she had pushed her husband 
gently Into a seat where he remained muttering 
angrily with half-glazed eyes. Then she came 
forward to greet her guests. " Come right in! " 
she said. " We're all ready for the service. It 
was so good of you to come.'* 

The little group from the church entered and 
stood together around the small white coffin on 
its bed of flowers. As they sang the familiar 
hymns, the young mother held in her lap her other 
child, a boy of three, and sobbed softly, while in 
the distance the muttered curses of her husband 
sounded a low, growling accompaniment. As the 
minister started to read the solemn words of the 
funeral service, he was startled by a shout and a 
sudden commotion, and the mother gave a faint 
cry as she saw her husband stagger to his feet. 

*' Well, I'm not going to stay and listen to that 
stuff ! " cried the man with a snarl, and he flung 
out of the room, slamming the door with a bang. 

The service ended with another hymn, and 
there was no further Interruption. The Lady of 
Good Cheer stopped afterward to say what she 
could to comfort Mrs. Schweizer. It was the 
first death In the little family circle, and the young 
wife was broken-hearted by her husband's be- 
haviour. 

" I don't know what we shall do," she said. 
" He does nothing but drink all the time. He 
can't do any work. He's really sick, too, and 



82 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

that's one reason he drinks. He knows It's kill- 
ing him, but he says he can't stop. Can't you 
get Mr. Day to come in and talk to him? Per- 
haps he could get him to go away to some cure. 
We can't go on living like this. It's just killing 
me. 

The Lady of Good Cheer gave her the sympa- 
thy she needed, and assured her that Mr. Day, 
the assistant minister, would see her husband and 
make some arrangement for his welfare. The 
young wife bade her good-bye with many expres- 
sions of gratitude, and went back to her dead 
child. 

Some months later the Lady of Good Cheer 
entered the tunnel that led beneath one of the an- 
cient houses of Cherry Hill. She passed through 
a long dark passage, and came out in a narrow 
court surrounded by wretched tumbledown tene- 
ments. Six of these miserable habitations, each 
more forlorn than the last, opened on the little 
court. A crowd of ragged little Italians were 
playing in the yard, a drunken Irishman lay on 
one of the door steps, and several slatternly fig- 
ures could be seen watching her from doorway and 
window. On the lines across the yard a startling 
variety of clothing was hung out to dry. Gay 
Italian scarfs, torn white skirts, red petticoats, 
yellow comfortables were arrayed together on one 
line, waving like the flags of all nations spread to 
catch the breeze. 



THE LOST BATTLE 83 

The Lady of Good Cheer turned into the most 
wretched barracks of them all. She climbed the 
broken front steps and entered a hall redolent of 
garlic and stale macaroni, and oppressive in the 
heat of summer with the sickening odours of de- 
cay. She held her breath as she passed by open 
doors. Through one door she could see a rag- 
ged, drunken Irishman who was shouting curses 
and shaking his fist at a dirty wife. Another 
door revealed a room crowded with Italians of all 
sizes and ages, all of them unspeakably dirty and 
squalid in appearance. She knocked at the door 
at the back, and a clear sweet voice called, " Come 
in." She entered and found herself in a wretched 
little room with bare, wooden walls and floor and a 
low, uneven ceiling. The furniture in the room 
was neat and pretty, however : a large bed covered 
with a white bedspread, a polished stove, a hand- 
some table and a few well-made chairs. In the 
middle of the floor knelt Mrs. Schweizer, a full 
length apron drawn over her neat black skirt. 
Her sleeves were rolled up, showing her beautiful 
white arms, and she had a scrubbing brush in her 
hand and a pail of suds at her side. Her cheeks 
were flushed, and a lock of her shining chestnut 
hair had escaped from its smooth coils and hung in 
a charmingly defiant little curl over her white neck. 
She looked up at the Lady of Good Cheer with 
consternation in her eyes. 

" Oh, excuse me ! " she said, trying to master 



84 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

the vagrant lock. *' I look like a perfect fright. I 
had no idea it was you." 

The Lady of Good Cheer assured her that she 
had never looked better, but the little woman con- 
tinued: " You see, I'm just back from work and I 
have to pitch in and clean up, for the house is a 
sight after Willie has been playing around all day. 
I've got to wash him up next," she added, with a 
glance at a pretty litde boy, whose neat dress 
showed traces of the day's vigorous campaign for 
amusement. 

" Do you leave him here all day? " asked the 
Lady of Good Cheer. 

"I have to, you seel" Mrs. Schweizer an- 
swered. " I'm working in a restaurant in Park 
Row, and it's hard work. I run in at noon for a 
minute to give him his lunch and see how he's get- 
ting on, and then I come back at night and clean 
up and get him his supper. It's terribly hard to 
leave him all day in this place. The people are 
awfully rough. I'm frightened about him all day 
long, and every night I come home with my heart 
in my mouth for fear I'll find him sick or dead 
or something — but what can I do?" 

" What do you hear from Mr, Schweizer? " 

" Oh, he's getting on splendidly out in that 
Home in Colorado. He's stopped drinking en- 
tirely and he's getting over the consumption." 

"That is splendid. I am so glad," said the 
Lady of Good Cheer. " But I'm afraid this work 



THE LOST BATTLE 85 

Is too hard for you. It Is too much to work all 
day and look out for your house too." 

" It is hard. I have to stand all day washing 
dishes, and some of these awfully hot days It was 
so close In there next the stove, I thought I should 
faint. I am so tired at night, I can hardly get 
home. You see, I'm not used to work like that." 

Her deep brown eyes were full of tears now, 
and her delicate lips quivered. 

" Why don't you go back to your father and 
mother till Mr. Schwelzer comes home, or at least 
ask them for help?" 

The girl was on her feet now and the graceful 
little head was held high. 

" No, never ! " she said and her eyes flashed 
through her tears. " You see, they forbade me to 
marry, and told me I'd get Into trouble. No, I've 
made my bed, and I've got to He In It now." 

She looked so like the Princess of the Fairy 
Tales In misfortune as she stood there with her 
flushed and tear-stained cheeks, her proud head 
held high, defying her fate, that the Lady of 
Good Cheer was uncertain whether to cry or to 
applaud. 

" But can you make It go, even so? " she asked. 

" Yes. They give me six dollars a week at the 
restaurant, and my rent Is only ^vq dollars a 
month here. And they give me some food at the 
restaurant too. I always have some cakes to 
bring home to Willie." 



86 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

*' Do they treat you well there?'' asked the 
Lady of Good Cheer. 

*' Oh, some of them are pretty rough, but the 
boss — well, he treats me almost too well,*' she 
said, and her delicate cheek flushed suddenly a 
deeper scarlet. " Oh,'' she cried suddenly, " do 
you know how hard It is to stick it out and do 
right, when I could have anything I want for my- 
self and the boy, if I — " she burst suddenly into 
tears. " Sometimes I think I'll go mad," she 
said. " I am so worried about Willie, and the 
work Is so hard, I think I'll drop dead before I 
get back. And then to come back to this place, 
with all these awful people around — " She 
shuddered convulsively. 

" Mrs. Schweizer," said the Lady of Good 
Cheer, " you're the bravest woman I know. I'm 
proud to have you as my friend and to take your 
hand. I do know just how hard a fight It Is, and 
I'm afraid I shouldn't be half as brave as you are. 
I shall think of you every day, and if ever you 
need me, if ever I can be of the least help, I'll come 
to you no matter what I am doing. You'll call 
on me, won't you? It would make me so happy 
to do even a little to help." 

The tears had ceased now. She stood very 
quiet and pale with her head still proudly erect. 

" There's nothing you or any one else can do. 
I've made a mistake with my life and I've got to 
work it out, all alone, no matter how hard it Is. 



THE LOST BATTLE 87 

I can do It, I know, only sometimes I get dis- 
couraged. When they are at you all the time, — 
when you think how easy it might be, — well, it's 
hard sometimes." 

The Lady of Good Cheer went away saddened 
and anxious. How long could a delicate frame 
stand the test of hard labour, cruel anxiety, foul 
surroundings, and the constant pressure of insidi- 
ous temptation? 

A year passed, and it was time for Mr. 
Schweizer to return. The Lady of Good Cheer 
rejoiced that the long period of cruel toil and 
dragging weeks was over. Mrs. Schweizer had 
moved, and the Lady of Good Cheer went in to 
congratulate her on the good news. As she 
knocked at the door, a well dressed man opened 
it and came out. She entered and found herself 
In a pleasant, prettily furnished apartment, a 
marked contrast to the wretched room in Cherry 
Street. A can of beer and two empty glasses 
stood on the table. Mrs. Schweizer rose to meet 
her. The Lady of Good Cheer noticed that she 
wore a striking dress with brilliant dashes of red 
about It, and she felt the greeting die away on her 
lips as she looked at the woman before her. The 
delicate face had grown cold and hard. An in- 
scrutable veil seemed to have been drawn over the 
soft, brown eyes. The exquisite colour of the 
cheek had changed to a harsh flush, and the lips 
had coarse lines about them. The Lady of Good 



88 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

Cheer felt a false timbre, a cold defiance, in the 
voice that she remembered as one of unusual sweet- 
ness. She could only murmur a few common- 
places in response to the woman's greeting; she 
wanted to escape and indulge in an old fashioned 
cry. She made a hurried excuse and turned away, 
and all the way home the hot tears stung her eye- 
lids and a sob was gripping at her throat. " I 
might have done no better in her place," she kept 
thinking. " But if I could only have helped her 
a little more — only one month more. Now it is 
too late." 



X 

A CRUEL DILEMMA 

There is a spirit of neighbourliness even In the 
huge tenement barracks where physical necessity 
rubs men's noses together in such close contact 
that the instinct of their souls Is to retire in sheer 
revulsion to the greatest possible distance from one 
another. It was this spirit which called the at- 
tention of the Lady of Good Cheer to the " lady 
up on the top floor " who was " terrible sick, and 
didn't have no one so much as to pass the time o' 
day with her while her man was away to work." 
This was the top floor of a tenement which was 
perhaps the most wretched of the many crowded 
tenements In the " Long Block." It provided 
apartments consisting of a kitchen and dark bed- 
room for a cheap rent, and In Its dark hall one was 
continually bumping Into the most unsavoury and 
disreputable representatives of every nation. 

In response to the spirit of neighbourliness of 
the " lady " on the first floor, the Lady of Good 
Cheer climbed to the top story and knocked at the 
left hand door In front. Her knock was an- 
swered by a deep voice that sounded more like a 
hail from a fishing smack off the Labrador coast, 
than a summons to enter a Cherry Street tenement. 

89 



90 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

She was greeted, as she entered, by a stout, 
quaint figure that spoke of oilskins and sou'wester 
and spray-drenched decks and wriggling cod. 
His weather-beaten face was seamed with many a 
kindly wrinkle. He wore a white goatee, and his 
hair was grey and worn away from his forehead, 
but he had a rugged vigour, a quick energetic way 
of moving, and a forceful method of speech that 
promised for many years to come, the capacity for 
hard labour. He had been sitting beside a bed 
upon which a woman was lying. They had moved 
the bed out from the dark bedroom, where there 
was no light and air, and placed it beside the win- 
dow in. the front room. The woman was very 
ill. Her thin face was white and drawn, save 
when an unnatural flush burned on her cheek. She 
seemed to be gasping for breath. 

" Oh, you're the lady from the church,'* said the 
man with a strong New England twang. " The 
old woman's pretty bad. Don't ye think so? 
Eh?" 

" She does look very sick," said the Lady of 
Good Cheer. " I see you've been taking good 
care of her. It's good that you could get off from 
work to be with her." 

" Well, I dunno as it is, an' I dunno as it is/^ 
said the old man. " That's as you looks at It. 
There ain't much money fallin' down the chimbly 
while I set here. But somehow I can't go off t' 
work with her lyin' here and gaspin'. I went down 



A CRUEL DILEMMA 91 

to the ship and started in unloading but I got t* 
thlnkin' o' her lyin' up here all alone and gaspin' 
fer breath, and I had ter knock off. Couldn't 
stand it, ye know." 

The Lady of Good Cheer went over to the bed- 
side and spoke her sympathy, as she patted the pil- 
low and gave to the bed the little touches of com- 
fort which a woman's hand knows instinctively. 
Then she sat down, leaning one elbow upon the 
bed, and bending over to catch the laboured speech 
of the sick woman. It was not the words which 
the Lady of Good Cheer brought to her sick 
that comforted them. She gave them herself, — 
her strength of will, her courage and faith, her 
peace of mind. The words were commonplace 
enough, but a strong will spoke through them, 
and there was a light of divine sympathy in her 
eyes, and an assurance of divine restfulness in ev- 
ery gesture and tone, that brought to the pain- 
racked woman the vision of overshadowing wings 
of love. 

When the Lady of Good Cheer turned to go, 
the old man followed her into the hall. 

" She looks wretchedly feeble," she said. 
"What does she get to eat?" 

"Wall, she ain't sick from over feedin'," the 
old man jerked out, with a quick sideways glance 
from beneath his bushy eyebrows. 

" I'm afraid you yourself haven't had enough 
to eat while you have been away from work," 



92 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

said the Lady of Good Cheer looking at him 
closely. 

" Wall," said the old man shamefacedly and 
hanging his head. " I hate to own it an' Fd never 
speak for meself, but we ain't had a scrap of vit- 
tles in the house for two days, and I'm that weak 
I couldn't do no work if I tried. But what kin I 
do," he went on with a scowl of perplexity that 
overshadowed his keen blue eyes. " She mought 
die any minute, an' I can't leave her lyin' here all 
alone, coughin' and gaspin', with no one but them 
dirty drunken Irish around. I can't do it, it's no 
use o' talkin' ; an' if I don't work, there's no money 
comin' in, and nawthin' ter eat." 

A tear came unbidden, and trickled slowly down 
the weather-beaten cheek. He drew the back of 
his hand roughly across his eyes. *' I'd orter be 
ashamed o' meself," he said, *' but I'm plum dis- 
couraged. It don't seem hardly right somehow. 
I've been a good livin' man, and I've allers done 
me best, an' me an' her has lived together nigh 
onter forty years, and now I've either got ter leave 
her ter suffer and die all alone, or else I've got ter 
set still here an' see her starve ter death? - I was 
readin' in the papers yesterday as how one o' them 
rich fellers on Fifth Avenue spent ten thousand 
dollars just fer posies fer his dinner party, an' if 
I had just ten dollars, it'd save the old woman 
from starvin'. An' I was readin' how one o' 
them rich women spent hundreds o' dollars fittin' 



A CRUEL DILEMMA 93 

out a puppy dog. IVe allers been a hard workin' 
man and never shirked me work, an' it don't seem 
right. I s'pose you think there's a God, but it 
don't seem no use ter pray, ner nothin'." 

A sudden fierce light came into his keen eyes. 
" Sometimes when I see her lyin' there an' starv- 
in' so patient like, I feel's if I'd like ter get a gun 
and go up an' shoot some o' them rich fellers, and 
take enough to keep the old woman alive. What 
do they care fer us folks? They ain't any o' them 
worked harder'n I have. It ain't right, I tell yer, 
it ain't right." 

It was a hard problem to solve. The Lady of 
Good Cheer felt a fierce anger spring up in her 
breast. It seemed as if some cruel Demon con- 
trolled the economic conditions of the world, gath- 
ering where he had not strewn, leaving the faithful 
workers to starve in anguish, while the indo- 
lent and selfish flourished. But she only said: " It 
is terrible indeed, but I believe God has sent me 
to help you, and I will see that your wife gets the 
care and food she needs. I will send some one in 
to sit with her while you are away. Where do you 
work? Is it far away? " 

" I'm workin' 'long shore now. I uster have a 
ship oncet, but I had bad luck and lost her in a 
storm, and since then I've had to turn to and work 
with them drunken Irish loafers on the dock." 

The Lady of Good Cheer reached out and took 
his gnarled and weather-beaten hand in her own 



94 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

slender one, and spoke with quiet positlveness : 
" It does seem as if the whole world was against 
you, and I don't blame you a bit for feeling as you 
do. But behind all that seems so cruel and hard 
is a greater purpose and a greater love than we 
can understand. Don't doubt that. God is car-" 
ing for you even now, and in the end he will set 
things right." 

The strength of her conviction spoke in every 
word, and her deep set eyes had in them a com- 
pelling intensity. The man could not but feel and 
believe that those eyes saw what was hidden to 
him. 

"Wall, I hope so!" he said. " IVe alius 
b'lleved in God, an' down in me old home in Maine 
I uster go to church, but in this place it seems as if 
there wa'n't no God." 

He stood silent a moment, his weatherbeaten 
features working as he sought to keep back the 
tears. He turned to go back to his place beside 
the dying woman, and said slowly: " But it ain't 
in reason the Lord sh'd git a man inter sich a fix 
that he's got ter leave his wife to die alone like a 
dog, or else set by her and starve. Mebbe the 
Lord did send ye ter fix things up — mebbe He 
did. I'm bound ter b'lieve He did." 



XI 

A DOMESTIC CRISIS 

The little home into which the Lady of Good 
Cheer had just made an entrance was a well fur- 
nished one on the top story of a queer three cor- 
nered tenement in New Chambers Street. It was 
never uncomfortably immaculate, but there was 
about it ordinarily an atmosphere of geniality and 
good cheer. This agreeable atmosphere was cre- 
ated chiefly by the activity of the mistress, a pretty 
and capable little lady from Paris whose bright 
dark eyes, smooth red cheeks, and expressive little 
mouth with full red lips were sufficiently attractive 
to make one overlook the fact that her figure was 
too much inclined to embonpoint to meet the sylph- 
like standards of Parisian beauty. Now, how- 
ever, the busy housekeeper had been reduced to 
helplessness by the cruel necessities of motherhood. 
She lay weak and sick in the bedroom, and her 
large family of children, who possessed the full 
measure of Gallic vivacity plus the exhilaration of 
the atmosphere of the Land of the Free, had 
played leap frog with the furniture, and left dishes 
and kitchen utensils in picturesque confusion. Her 
husband, a short stolid little Frenchman, with a 
round handsome face, and sad dark eyes, sat de- 

95 



96 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

jectedly by the kitchen table with his head sunk 
on his breast, his long dark hair mussed distract- 
edly on his forehead. He scarcely looked up at 
the greeting of the Lady of Good Cheer. 

" Ah, vat sail I do? " he said. " I cannot get ze 
work. Zey want men no more to make ze slippers 
by ze hand. Zey make zem all by ze machine, 
and ze cheeldren have nossing to eat, and now here 
ees come anosser bebe! " 

It was Indeed a sad situation for the Le Boutil- 
llers. The Lady of Good Cheer had been called 
into see them some months before during the sick- 
ness of a little girl. The child had died In spite 
of all that could be done, but by her constant, sym- 
pathetic and watchful care the Lady of Good 
Cheer had completely won the affection of these 
warmhearted foreigners, who felt themselves des- 
perately alone in the strange city. Le Boutilller 
was a skilled workman, who was very clever at 
making slippers and shoes by hand, but lately ma- 
chines had been Introduced which threw him and 
his fellow workmen entirely out of employment. 
If he did get any work he had to compete with the 
machine-made product, and his best efforts would 
not bring in more than four dollars a week. 

Mrs. Le Boutilller was a marvel as a house- 
keeper. She had won a prize at the church for 
the most skilful use of a dollar in the purchase 
of food. The housekeepers from uptown who 
saw the results of her expenditure were amazed 



A DOMESTIC CRISIS 97 

at the completeness and the variety of her exhibi- 
tion. Nothing was forgotten, not even the pep- 
per and vinegar and oil for the salad dressing. It 
was a perfectly balanced meal fit for any gourmet, 
and remarkable for Its contrast with the purchases 
of the Irish housekeepers, who spent half the dol- 
lar on tea and the rest on a poor piece of meat, 
and of the Scotch, who bought with the dollar 
enough oatmeal and baked beans to last the fam- 
ily a month. But even Mrs. Le Boutilller had to 
have a dollar to work her magic, and now the 
dollar was not forthcoming. Besides, one of the 
children had been desperately 111, and care and 
medicines had again been required. 

The Lady of Good Cheer had secured some 
milk tickets from the Dispensary, and every day 
little Gaspard had gone over with a ticket and 
brought back a can of milk. This experience that 
milk came from milk tickets resulted in considera- 
ble mental confusion when correlated with the pic- 
tures of cows in the process of being milked as he 
had seen them In Kindergarten. Consequently 
when he first went to the country and saw ^ cow 
grazing in the meadows, his muddled apperception 
crystallised at once under the stimulus of great ex- 
citement, and he exclaimed, " Oh, look at that milk 
ticket!" Gaspard was a stocky little urchin of 
some seven years, with brown eyes which sparkled 
with a glint of Impish laughter, as if he were re- 
joicing In the knowledge that there was a cannon 



98 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

cracker about to explode under your chair. He 
had a firm little mouth, and a curious scar or birth- 
mark on his cheek which added to the satirical and 
Puck-like expression of his countenance. The rest 
of the family were somewhat in awe of little Gas- 
pard. They never knew what new bit of ingenu- 
ity would evolve from his sprightly brain. 

Marie, a girl of ten, upon whose shoulders the 
cares of housekeeping rested during her mother's 
illness, did not find him of great assistance in wash- 
ing the dishes, scrubbing the floor, and especially 
in packing the other children away in their com- 
mon beds at night. His unwillingness to be 
thus compressed at bed time may have been due 
to his recent experience of spending two weeks 
In the country. On the first night of his vacation, 
when his wriggling members were at last confined 
in a clean white night suit and he was deposited 
between the sheets of a pretty little bed, he 
promptly rolled over to the farthest edge and flat- 
tened himself against the wall. He looked back 
over his shoulder at the crowd of little white clad 
figures waiting to be located for the night and 
shouted: "How many of youse is comin' in 
here?*' 

The teacher answered: " No one is coming in, 
Gaspard. The bed is just for you." Gaspard 
rose to his knees and stared with his eyes as big 
as saucers. 

" De whole bed! '' he cried. " Gee! See me 



A DOMESTIC CRISIS 99 

flop ! " And he threw himself flat face down with 
arms and legs expanded to their utmost radius like 
a human starfish. 

Gaspard was standing near Mr. Le Boutillier 
as the Lady of Good Cheer entered. After she 
had sought to remove from the father's brow the 
cloud of melancholy which the arrival of his latest 
born had occasioned, Gaspard led her into the bed- 
room where Mrs. Le Boutillier lay, pale but smil- 
ing, with a fine fat blue-eyed baby at her side. 

" Ees he not a fine bebe?" the mother asked, 
looking down at him tenderly. " But," she went 
on, glancing up with an apologetic smile, " what 
we sail do, me, I know not. How we can get ze 
food for one more? My husband, he ees so 
trouble. Ze children, zay have nossing to eat all 
day. Ah, poor little bebe, zay none of zem wants 
you, none but me I " And she pressed the little 
head against her cheek and her eyes filled with 
tears which trickled down on to the face of the 
child until he rolled his blue eyes in astonishment. 

All the twinkle was gone from Gaspard's face. 
He looked solemn and old, with his firm little lips 
and the scar on his cheek and a wrinkle on his 
brow. 

" But, Mother,*' he said, " why did you go and 
get another baby when there ain't enough in the 
house for the kids youVe got? Me and Marie 
haven't had but an old dry bit of bread all day, 
and when we keep askin' father to give us some- 



loo BESIDE THE BOWERY 

thin' to eat, he just sits there and shakes his head 
and says he can't get no work. Wot cher goin' 
ter do when that kid gets hungry and begins to 
howl?" 

Mrs. Le Boutillier for answer only pressed the 
babe closer and began to sob. Gaspard looked 
conscience-stricken when he saw his mother's tears. 

"Aw, say! " he said, "don't ory, Mother! I 
know what we'll do ! There's an old feller down 
the street wants his coal carried up, and I'll go 
down and carry coal for him. I'm strong," — and 
he displayed his little muscles — " I'll bet I can 
work as well as those old loafers. If I work hard 
all day he'd orter give me a quarter, hadn't he? " 
he went on eagerly. " He'd give me ten cents 
anyway, an' in a week I'd have about a dollar, an' 
that'll git enough food fer us. So don't you cry, 
Mother! " and he patted her hand as it lay on the 
bed beside him. 

The Lady of Good Cheer felt a strange clutch- 
ing at the throat as she listened to this unexpected 
speech. She knew that here in the Fourth Ward 
the little ones she loved lived close to the dark 
shadows and that it could not be long before even 
the most joyous and careless must feel the chill 
touch of poverty or death. She had rejoiced in 
the manly way in which many of the young boys 
and girls stood up to share the cares of their 
parents, but there was something about this small 
imp of mischief as he squared his stout little 




rnoto by J. H. Uenison. 

UNDER THE SIMDOW 



A DOMESTIC CRISIS loi 

shoulders to the burden of the responsibility which 
he could only dimly imagine, that seemed unusual 
even to her and touched her deeply. Mrs. Le 
Boutillier smiled through her tears. 

"Oh, Gaspard!'' she said. "You don't un- 
derstand! We mus' pay for ze bebe." 

Gaspard's black eyes opened wide at this unex- 
pected news, but he was not yet disheartened. 

"How much yer gotter pay?" he asked. 
" What does babies cost? " 

" I've got to pay ten dollars," said his mother. 

" Gee ! " said Gaspard, utterly aghast. " It 
would take me weeks an' weeks to make all that 
money! " 

He stood a moment in silence, bravely conceal- 
ing his discouragement lest his mother should weep 
again. Then slowly he picked up his cap and 
started to go out and do what he could to repair 
the disaster. The imp in his face had fled at the 
sight of family care. Gaspard had assumed his 
share of responsibility for this new investment, this 
costly bit of flesh which made such extravagant 
demands on the family resources, and this was 
clearly no time for mischief. But as he reached 
the door, Puck reappeared for a minute, as he 
called back: " Say, Mother, why didn't yer get a 
girl? If boys is ten dollars, you could have got 
a girl for five, sure ! " 



XII 

WAITING 

She was waiting for something. You could see it 
in the anxious lines that puckered Incongru- 
ously a face that Nature had designed to be as 
placid as that of a sheep in quiet meadows. She 
sat heavily In the cheap easy chair with Its gaudy 
covering, but there was no rest in her pose. She 
bent slightly forward as if she were about to rise 
at some expected sound. As she knitted busily, 
every now and then she would turn her head 
quickly to the window, or she would suddenly stop 
the click of her needles and listen a moment with 
her eyes on the door, and then her hands of them- 
selves would resume their work. 

The room was a tiny, bare little room, and yet 
It was evident that her hands had done everything 
possible to make it look its best. The wooden 
floor shone from hard scrubbing. The deal table 
was covered with a home-made patchwork cloth of 
gay hues. A few photographs and brilliant 
squares of embroidery or patchwork hung on the 
walls. On the mantel were some knickknacks 
made of shell, such as sailors love to bring home, 
and the photograph of a man. It was the portrait 
of a common workingman, dressed in his best with 

lOZ 



WAITING 103 

a white collar and a new necktie of hues that 
seemed to impress even the photographic plate. 
The picture had an irresistible attraction for her, 
for her eyes kept unconsciously straying toward it, 
until with a start she would turn again to the win- 
dow or the door. 

It was a strange place in which to expect to find 
any one living, this tiny room tucked away in the 
third rear house which a greedy landlord had suc- 
ceeded in squeezing into the courtyard behind a 
Cherry Street tenement. The great stream of 
passers swept by on the street outside, little dream- 
ing that the narrow tunnel beneath that ordinary 
tenement led into a little world with a population 
equal to that of a country town. Around the nar- 
row little patch of air that had been left in the 
process of squeezing, rose four or five tumble- 
down wooden structures, that seemed to have been 
thrown together on the impulse of the moment, 
with no plan save that of utilising every possible 
inch of space and air. No room was wasted on 
staircases. The one which ascended to the tiny 
room was steep as a ladder, partly outside and 
partly inside the house. Just enough space was 
allowed overhead for a man of average height to 
stand upright. A tall man would have had to 
stoop to get in, and sit down when he entered. 
One or two rooms at most were all that were al- 
lowed to a family, but the rent was only four 
dollars a month for single rooms and six for dou- 



104 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

ble rooms, so that every vacant space was occu- 
pied. 

The court swarmed with children. Always in 
the ears of the old woman as she sat and waited 
sounded the noise of their laughter as they played, 
or of their cries as some drunken mother cursed 
them or beat them. By day the court echoed with 
the shrieks of women as they quarrelled over their 
clothes lines, and by night with their screams and 
curses as they fought over their beer. There was 
dirt everywhere, on faces and clothes and walls 
and floors. The air was heavy with the odour of 
it. From every window dirty frowsled heads 
looked out. Any of these doors might have been 
opened to reveal a grimy table covered with the 
remains of a greasy meal, a soiled heap of bedding 
on the floor, and a broken chair or two. 

Hidden away in the midst of these noisy, dirty 
foreigners, up her narrow little stair in the tiny 
spotless room, the old woman sat and waited. 
She would gladly have moved to pleasanter quar- 
ters, but for the past two months she had not been 
able to get even the four dollars necessary for her 
rent here, and it was only the kindness of the land- 
lady that allowed her even this space. The room 
was bare enough, but the cupboard was almost 
empty. A cupful of tea leaves was all that was 
left; the last scrap of bread had gone the day be- 
fore. But it was not food for which she was wait- 
ing. There was a book open on the table before 



WAITING 105 

her, a book that was old and worn. She turned 
to it once in a while anxiously and read a little, as 
if she expected some sort of direction or explana- 
tion. 

Day after day she had sat and waited just as she 
sat now, — day after day since the morning seven 
years ago when her husband went away to his 
work and never came back. No word had ever 
come from him, and so each day she prepared the 
room for his return and sat down to wait. She 
had no friends. She had come to New York as 
a stranger with her husband. Her acquaintances 
were limited to the landlady and the grocer and an 
occasional neighbour who dropped in to borrow a 
broom or a teapot. At first they had given her 
a rough sympathy, but after a time they grew im- 
patient with her. ** Sure, he's never comin' back. 
He's dead these five years," they would say. She 
would look at them sadly as though she did not 
understand, and would shake her head slowly. 
Sometimes after several neighbours had spoken in 
the effort to convince her, she would lose hope. 
All the expectant light would leave her eyes and 
her face would grow heavy and sad and dull. 
Then she would sit again by the gay-covered table 
and turn the pages of the book in the heaviness of 
despair. At last her eye would chance upon some 
promise there, and once more the expectant light 
would return, and she would start up at the first 
step on the stair. The neighbours would look at 



io6 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

one another and tap their heads and say, " Poor 
soui;' 

One day the Lady of Good Cheer found her. 
She had come in to see the landlady's son who was 
dying the slow and torturing death of tuberculosis 
in his little narrow room, and the landlady said: 
" Ther's a poor soul in the third rear house, and 
I don't believe she's had a bite to eat these two 
days. She owes two months, but I haven't had 
the heart to turn her out." 

Very quietly the old woman told the Lady of 
Good Cheer the story of her waiting. She had 
grown cautious now, for she had learned to expect 
criticism when she told her story to the chance ac- 
quaintance. But the Lady of Good Cheer found 
It easy to draw out her secret. The woman had 
no complaints to offer. It was no " strange mys- 
tery," no " terrible fate." If she knew people 
who would give her sewing then she would not 
have to go without food, but she had no friends. 

" How could I make friends with the like of 
these?" she said, and nodded her head at a 
dishevelled woman who was shaking her fist out of 
the opposite window. 

She did not want work that would take her far 
from home, she said. She wished to be here 
ready to greet him when he came back. 

The Lady of Good Cheer did not try to over- 
throw her hope or to shake her confidence. This 
was the woman's whole life, this waiting in un- 



WAITING 107 

shaken assurance for the return of the man she 
loved. What were seven years? He had said 
he would come back. He might be delayed, but 
he would come. The Lady of Good Cheer said 
what she could to comfort and cheer, and when she 
left there was a more peaceful light on the placid 
face. She sent in a basketful of food, and found 
sewing enough to provide for the needs of the 
future. But the one real need she could not sat- 
isfy. She could only sympathise. Many a day 
she would come in and sit down in the little room 
that was always spotless and ready for his return, 
and the old woman would push her spectacles up, 
and they would talk together of his coming. 

One day the Lady of Good Cheer knocked and 
there was no answer. She opened the door. 
The old woman sat in her easy chair by the gay- 
covered table, looking towa'rd the door, as she had 
sat and waited all the seven long and lonely years. 
But there was no longer on her face the strained 
and anxious look that told of expectation ever re- 
newed and ever overshadowed by disappointment. 
There was a look on the placid features that had 
never been there before — a glad surprise, a com- 
plete content and peace. The shouts and screams 
of the noisy courtyard sounded in through the win- 
dow, but the old woman would never hear them 
again. Down below two of the neighbours, who 
for so many years had mocked at the lonely woman 
and her absurd delusion, were fighting with shrieks 



io8 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

and curses. With the uproar dinning in her ears 
the Lady of Good Cheer stood in the silence of the 
little room. From the lips of the dead she could 
hear something which the heartless cynics outside 
would never hear or believe: the long waiting 
had not been in vain. The moment had come 
that had made up for all the years of loneliness 
and disappointment. He had come back at last, 
and had found her at her post, waiting. She had 
left the little room forever, not in solitude, but in 
the joy and peace of his return. 



XIII 

A BATTLE BY NIGHT 

It was after ten o'clock Sunday night The min- 
ister and Van Schank were hurrying down Market 
Street, discussing anxiously the whereabouts and 
fate of the Lady of Good Cheer. She had been 
seen to dart off into the darkness after service, and 
they feared she had ventured into the dangerous 
and disreputable neighbourhood of Hamilton 
Street to look up the Summers family, whose ab- 
sence from church she had noted with dismay. It 
was a breathless summer's night and the tenement 
population had crept forth into the streets in the 
hope of finding precious air. The sidewalk had 
become a public bedroom; little children slept on 
blankets on the bare stones, while their mothers, 
with garments reduced to a minimum, snored in 
chairs at their side. Each doorstep was a recep- 
tion room where young matrons gabbled noisily. 
Here and there, at certain well known corners used 
by the maidens of the neighbourhood as substitutes 
for parlours in which to receive their suitors, 
groups of girls were doing their utmost to attract 
the young toughs who were making the rounds of 
the saloons. Now and then could be heard a bois- 
terous laugh, as some rough arm was thrown 
' 109 



no BESIDE THE BOWERY 

around a slim waist. The darkness of the street 
was interrupted by the yellow glare from the flam- 
ing torches round the soda booths, which illumined 
vividly a ring of dark faces and dirty hands that 
clutched for penny glasses of poisonous looking 
green or pale pink fluid. 

When the minister and Van Schank turned into 
Hamilton Street after all the noise and glare of 
the thoroughfare, they seemed suddenly to plunge 
into blackness and silence. This was no public 
bedroom and parlour and dining room. The 
neighbourhood recognised this section as a place 
entered at night only by those whose purposes 
were dark. Only a few shadowy female forms 
followed them stealthily, and here and there a 
group of men whispered together in the gloom of 
an alley way. From behind the closed doors of 
saloons came smothered shouts and curses, and 
from some of the houses with tight drawn curtains 
and shut blinds could be heard the sound of 
laughter and drunken songs. With every step the 
minister grew more anxious about the Lady of 
Good Cheer. 

" The idea of her coming Into a place like this 
at this time of night," he said. " Why, that crowd 
would sandbag her merely on the chance of finding 
a quarter In her purse, and I don't see how she 
could possibly get through the street without In- 
sult." 

The two men turned into a narrow tenement 



A BATTLE BY NIGHT iii 

door half way up the street and ran quickly up the 
four flights of stairs to the top floor. There were 
four families on each floor as usual, and they 
knocked at the right hand door on the front. The 
door opened, and to their great relief there sat 
the Lady of Good Cheer, talking earnestly with a 
well-dressed, thick-set man, who was looking at her 
with a " cat in the cream " expression in his twin- 
kling blue eyes, and a smile of humorous depreca- 
tion beneath his yellow^ moustache. Summers was 
the kind of man known on the Bowery as a 
" good jollier.'' He had an air of confiding 
frankness that drew one swiftly into intimacy. 
The twinkle in his eyes and the mischievous quirk 
about the corner of his mouth were part of the 
native heritage he had derived from proximity to 
the Blarney Stone. In spite of his genial and con- 
fiding air, however, no one ever succeeded In find- 
ing out anything about him. He disappeared 
from view every day or two, and remained invisi- 
ble for twelve or fourteen hours. When he re- 
turned his pockets were full of bills, but no one, 
not even his wife, could extort from him any in- 
formation as to how he got them or where he had 
been. He turned off every question with an 
evasive joke, and even those who considered him 
an intimate friend really knew nothing about him. 
The Lady of Good Cheer had met this family 
through her protegee Mrs. Black, a sister of Mrs. 
Summers. Mrs. Summers was then " on the 



112 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

street," for although Summers brought in enough 
money, both he and his wife had been so absorbed 
in drinking and gambling that their home had been 
broken up. Mrs. Black had begged the Lady of 
Good Cheer to do for her sister's husband what 
she had done for Mr. Black. Summers was dis- 
gusted with himself and sad enough over his 
broken home. He had responded to her appeal 
with shame-faced frankness and he and his wife 
had taken the pledge together. The Lady of 
Good Cheer had started them at housekeeping in 
this little apartment. The neatness of the room, 
where every article was fresh and new, bore wit- 
ness to the success of the experiment and to the 
efficiency of Mrs. Summers as a housekeeper. 
Each week some new piece of furniture for the 
house, or of some article of clothing for the chil- 
dren, was added from the funds Summers brought 
home. The family had attended church regularly, 
and this week when they had failed to appear the 
Lady of Good Cheer was sure that it betokened 
some disaster, physical or moral, and had hurried 
to their home heedless of danger to herself in the 
hope of arriving before the damage was irremedi- 
able. 

Summers looked up as the minister and his 
friend entered. 

" She's been givin' me a terrible lecture," he 
said with a rueful smile on his frank face. " Say, 
you'd orter 'ave heard her," he went on. *' She 



A BATTLE BY NIGHT 113 

give it to me somethin' fierce, just because Fd been 
drinkin' a bit and wouldn't lie out of it, like most 
of your bums.'' 

But the Lady of Good Cheer was in no mood 
for cajolery. She sat leaning forward, her arms 
resting on the table and her slender hands clasped 
lightly, but as she answered him, her eyes were 
fixed upon Summers with such intensity that his 
semi-jovial mood began to give way beneath their 
gaze. Before her passionate appeal in the name 
of his home and his little ones he could no longer 
maintain his air of indifference. His eyes dropped 
and a sheepish look came over his face. As she 
pleaded with him, she reached out her hand and 
patted the head of little Mamie, a rosy cherub of 
two years, who had crept out of bed and was gal- 
loping about, her progress impeded by no bodily 
ornament more serious than her own yellow curls. 
Lizzie, a thin, sallow child of eight, whose face 
was prematurely wrinkled by anxiety and pain, was 
watching the scene from the chair on which she 
half sat, half stood, her little figure all bent and 
twisted. Mrs. Summers had been hastily donning 
her garments in the bedroom, but now her good 
humoured Irish face appeared at the door. The 
Lady of Good Cheer ended her appeal by recall- 
ing to Summers how, when she first fitted out his 
home, he had promised that he would start in then 
and there and live a different life. At this point 
Summers looked up and ventured a protest. 



114 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

" Look here," he said. " It ain't no use fer 
you to talk about me bein' a Christian. I can't be 
a Christian in my business, and that's straight. 
It's no use talkin'." 

" I should think a man could do right in any 
business," she said. " If your business is one in 
which you can't do right, you ought to give it up." 

"What! and see my children starve? Not 
much I oughtn't," he answered. 

" Can't you tell me some of your difficulties in 
your work?" she continued. "Perhaps I could 
help you." 

" Oh, I can't explain it to you," he said eva- 
sively, " you couldn't understand ! " 

His manner discouraged further questions as to 
his business, and she returned quickly to the main 
issue. She knew that in spite of his faults he was 
a man of his word, and her one desire was to get 
from him a promise that he would drink no more 
that night. She knew that if he took to the bottle 
again he would not stop till every penny was gone 
and all his possessions pawned. But Summers 
was obdurate. 

" I'll promise after I've had another drink," he 
said. 

" Mr. Summers, I can't rest to-night till I have 
your word," she answered. 

" I'm no liar like the rest of these bums, or I'd 
promise," he said. " But what would be the use 



A BATTLE BY NIGHT 115 

of me lyin' to ye. Fm a goln' to have another 
drink." 

Here the minister interfered. "You must go 
home," he said to the Lady of Good Cheer. " I'll 
look after Summers." 

" I can't leave him till he promises," she said. 

Her face was white and haggard, but in spite 
of physical exhaustion, in her eyes the fire of de- 
termination burned bright as ever, and by the set 
of her firm lips and the tilt of her strong chin a 
man of less befuddled mind than Summers would 
have known that he might as well surrender then 
as later. But with Summers in his present condi- 
tion the conflict was likely to outlast the night. 

" I'll give you my word that Summers won't 
touch a drop till he sees you in the morning. I'll 
stay by and see to it," said the niinister. 

He little knew what he was saying, but she ac- 
cepted his word unquestioningly. " Very well, 
then, I'll go," she said. " If you are going to 
stay, Mrs. Summers and the children had better 
come with me up to her sister's and spend the 
night." 

They departed in accordance with this arrange- 
ment, leaving Summers gazing at the minister and 
Van Schank in amazed disgust. 

" Say, look here I What kind of a holdup is 
this? You're all right and I'm proud to have ye 
callin' on me and doin' the social act, but this ain't 



ii6 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

no time o' night fer kaffy Matches and pink teas," 
he remarked. 

" It is rather late," said the minister, " but you 
see I promised the Lady of Good Cheer Fd stay 
until you promised not to drink any more." 

" Hully Gee ! d'ye think, I'm agoin' ter set the 
house afire and murder me children on one glass 
o' beer? I tell ye, I'm agoin' ter have another 
drink, and then I'll go to bed and to-morrow I'll 
be sober enough to go to me own funeral." 

" It's hard luck, but I'm afraid I'll have to stay 
till you promise not to drink any more." 

"What t'ell! You ain't me grandmother!" 
said Summers, a sulky look clouding his good- 
humoured face. " I can swaller me food and 
drink without no clerical assistance ! Me stomach 
ain't run by no dum syndicate. You mind your 
business, and I'll mind mine." 

" Mr. Summers, this is my business," said the 
minister. " I'm here for the Lady of Good 
Cheer. Think what she has done for you. She 
has cared for you and your family as no mother 
would have done. She got you this home. She 
gave you food when you were hungry. She gave 
clothes to your naked children. All these weeks 
she has watched over you and planned for you. 
,You know when you drink it is like stabbing her. 
Don't you suppose that if it would stop you from 
drinking, she would hold out her hand and let you 
cut It off?" 



A BATTLE BY NIGHT 117 

At mention of the Lady of Good Cheer, the 
look of annoyance faded from Summers's face. 

" I honestly believe she would, so help me 
Gawd,'' he said solemnly. 

" Are you going to disappoint a love like that? " 
said the minister. " You know how she cares. 
Do you suppose God cares less? She would let 
her hand be cut off to save you. They really did 
drive nails through the hands of a man once, and 
cut his body with the scourge and he allowed It, 
that you might know how He cares and what He 
is willing to bear to save you from doing wrong. 
A true man will not be false to love like that." 

" Oh, say now, I tell you It's no use my tryin' to 
be good in my business. I might as well try to 
balance in egg on me nose in the middle of a 
sluggln' ma4:ch. Them sailors is tough customers 
to handle. You might wear the knees off yer 
pants prayin', and there wouldn't none of them 
budge till you'd loaded him up with booze. And 
the whole business is crooked. You can't get 'em 
to hand out their cash ter buy gilt-edged hymn 
books fer dyin' orphans, and we've gotter get the 
boodle off 'em somehow. A feller must live." 

"How do you do it?" asked the minister, 
growing Interested in the revelation. He had 
heard something of the runners who went out In 
row-boats from the sailors' boarding-houses, and 
met the incoming ships to decoy the sailors to some 
disreputable place. The business of the runners 



ii8 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

was to render these men helpless by drugged 
whisky, and rob them of their pay. Then while 
still unconscious, the boarding-house keeper would 
deliver them on board some out-going ship, and 
receive in return a goodly sum from the captain. 
Little was known of the situation at the time, for 
It was before the ring of boarding-house keepers, 
which controlled all the shipping of sailors in New 
York, was broken up at great personal risk by the 
rector of the Floating Church. So effectually was 
it exposed, however, that the whole iniquitous sys- 
tem, by which the helpless sailors had been de- 
frauded for years, was destroyed. 

The note of curiosity in the minister's voice 
recalled Summers to himself. He glanced keenly 
at the minister and a mask fell suddenly over his 
frank countenance. 

" Oh, I don't do much! " he said. " I just go 
out in a boat and jolly the sailors a bit." 

He rose to his feet. " Well ! I'm off to get 
another drink, an' then I'm done. I'll drink no 
more then, not if ye soak me in beer up to me 
chin." 

The minister knew that if he really believed 
this, his belief was certainly an hallucination. 
There would be no more stopping after the first 
drink than after the first yard on a toboggan slide. 

*' But I promised the Lady of Good Cheer you 
wouldn't take any at all," he said. " It is very 
awkward, but I don't see how I can let you go. 



A BATTLE BY NIGHT 119 

You wouldn't have me break a promise to a lady, 
would you? " 

" Now look here ! " said Summers, setting his 
teeth and with an ugly look in his narrowing eyes. 
" You can promise the Empress of Chiny I won't 
swaller nothin' but green lemonade and stewed 
clams, if you like, but I've got to have a drink, all 
the same, and what's more I'm goin' to get it 
right now! " and he started forward. 

" you'll have to walk right through me then," 
said the minister, smiling, " for unfortunately I 
promised to stop you, you know." 

" Stop me! " shouted Summers, now thoroughly 
aroused. " You couldn't do it! not If you was a 
archangel blowin' on a tin trumpet. Get out o' 
my way or somethln'll get broke ! " 

He picked up a heavy club and rushed at the 
minister. Van Schank jumped to his side in some 
alarm. 

" Thanks ! I'll take it on the top of my head 
and my left ear," said the minister. " Oh, come 
off. Summers, don't make a fool of yourself. I 
know you wouldn't hit me." 

Summers dropped his stick and looked rather 
foolish. " You know I'm not here for my own 
amusement," he went on. " I'm here to help youy 
— your true self, I mean, — for your true self 
doesn't want to drink. It hates the drink, and 
I'm here to help you against that devil that is try- 
ing to make you do something you know Is wrong." 



I20 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

" You're off," said Summers. " Me true self 
and all the rest of 'em wants a drink, and I'm goin' 
to get it. If you won't let me out o' the door, 
I'll jump out the window. I'm desp'rate," and he 
rushed out on the little balcony that overhung the 
street, four stories below. 

" All right," said the minister, " jump away. 
Only don't make too bad a spot on the sidewalk." 
Summers came back from the window with a fool- 
ish grin. 

" Hear them folks over to the Ink Pot," he 
said. 

" That what? " asked the minister. 

"The Ink Pot. That's what they call that 
joint over in Cherry Street. They're drinkin' and 
bangin' each other on the head and doin' the fancy 
song and dance act every night in the year. The 
can never stops goin' over there, so they calls it 
the Ink Pot." 

The house so designated was an old mansion 
with colonial doorway and mahogany woodwork, 
each room of which was now occupied by a large 
family, and which had become notorious for its 
noisy altercations. Summers entered upon a racy 
description of the habits of his neighbours even to 
the exciting point where they " pulled a gun on 
the copper." This led to shooting stories, and the 
minister and Van Schank swapped yarns till the 
clock struck two. 

" Say, I can't stay in here another second. I 




Photo by J. H. Denison. 



THE INK POT 



A BATTLE BY NIGHT 121 

feel like there was ten cans of dynamite in me each 
goin' to bust a different way. You sit here and 
I'll go out and take a walk and come back in a 
minute/' said Summers. 

" Vm tired of sitting still myself. I think FU 
go along," said the minister. 

Summers's face fell. He hesitated a moment. 
Then he darted to the door. 

" I've got to leave you. I'll be back in a sec- 
ond," he said as he slipped out. 

" You would better go home and sleep and re- 
lieve me in the morning," said the minister to Van 
Schank. 

" All right," he said, *' I can hardly keep my 
eyes open." 

The minister did not wait for Summers's return. 
He hurried downstairs and found him making a 
bee line for the saloon. 

" Hold on a minute," he called. ** You came 
near forgetting me." 

" Say, can't you leave a fellow alone long 
enough to blow his nose?" said Summers with 
some irritation. 

" I would hate to lose sight of a good pal like 
you," said the minister. " You see, I can't be 
happy out of your sight." 

" You can't wad me ears wid no song and dance 
like that," said Summers with a rueful grin. 
" Honest now, I've got ter leave ye. I've got a 
little business of me own to tend to." 



122 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

" What's the matter? " asked the minister. 

" It's about me wife," he said. " I can't tell 
you." 

" Why, she's fast asleep at her sister's long 
ago," said the minister. 

" Don't you believe it," said Summers, shaking 
his head in sinister fashion. 

" Take my word fer it, you'll never find a 
woman in the place where she thinks you think she 
is," he continued darkly. " Whenever she tells 
you very particular just where she is, you can be 
dead sure she's somewhere else. It's only when 
she forgets to tell you where she's goin' that you'll 
find her there. Oh, she's clever, all right, but she 
can't fool me. I'm goin' around to her sister's 
just to prove she ain't there." 

" I'm sure she is, and I'll go along and see," 
said the minister. 

Summers ground his teeth in desperation. 
"Come on, then!" he said, and started up the 
street like a stone from a catapult. 

The streets were still and deserted. Only from 
the Ink Pot across the way shouts and screams 
still sounded. There was something awful in the 
deadly silence of this densely populated street. It 
seemed as if sudden death had descended on the 
great city with all its noise and turmoil. Across 
the way a group of men lurked in the shadow, 
whispering. Summers stopped and waited for the 
minister. 



A BATTLE BY NIGHT 123 

" I know that gang," he said. *' They're waitin' 
fer a sailor to come out o' the saloon, well-doped 
an' leary-eyed, an' they'll give him a jolt with 
the Black Jack, an' when he comes to, he'll be 
lucky if he has even a shirt to flap round his 
ribs." 

" Can't we stop them? " asked the minister. 

*' Not much. It's none of our business. Let 
'em alone," and Summers started on. *' Say, me 
nerves is on the bias, an' me veins is skewgeed. 
I've got to have a rosiner. Wait just a jiff. Lll 
be back before a skeeter could flip his wing." 

But this did not agree with the minister's con- 
tract, and so they went through the gamut of argu- 
ment again, from passionate plea in the name of 
the holiest to the semi-jocose " jolly." They 
touched on tears and anger and laughter. Now 
they were in front of a huge tenement that loomed 
up vague and shadowy in the darkness. 

" Here's the place, now we'll see! " said Sum- 
mers, and darted through the open door into the 
long black hallway. It was pitch dark, and they 
had to grope their way. Strange noises sounded 
in the darkness before them, heavy breathing and 
now and then a panting groan. They crept on 
noiselessly. Suddenly Summers tripped and fell 
headlong with a curse. A weird cry of terror 
echoed through the hall and a fearful groan. 
Two vague figures rose from the ground under 
the minister's feet, and brushed past, nearly over- 



124 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

turning him in the dark. A thrill of horror went 
through him. 

" What's that? Summers ! Where are you? " 
he said. 

"The good for nothing bums!" Summers an- 
swered in the blackness. " Sleepin' all over the 
floor, so a decent man can't stir without trippin* 
over some man's nose, or dirtyin' his shoes in their 
whiskers. I wisht I had a gun! I'd singe their 
ears for 'em ! " 

He crept out the back door into the court and 
across the court into the rear house, whence soon 
arose the sound of a violent altercation. 

" She's there all right ! " said Summers, return- 
ing at length. " I pulled her out o' bed to make 
sure. She done it to fool me. You can't never 
tell what a woman'll do next. She got on me 
nerves all right. Say, I'm crazy. I've gotter 
have a ball!" 

" Come, let's walk up to the Bridge," said the 
minister. 

Summers assented sullenly, and once more they 
made their way through the ghostly streets upon 
which rested that horror of silence, so intense, so 
awful, that it was a relief to catch even the sound 
of a curse from behind the closed doors of a saloon, 
or to see the skulking figures of the footpads as 
they awaited their victims. 

The first grey light of dawn was breaking when 
at last they stood on the centre of the great bridge, 



A BATTLE BY NIGHT 125 

with Its huge piers towering above them, shadowy 
in the grey light, and the black river swirling far 
below. Around them in the depths lay the great 
city, with all Its wretchedness and vice and bitter 
anguish packed into the crowded tenements that 
stretched away for miles; the great city, with its 
countless thousands hushed for awhile into insensi- 
bility, only too soon to waken to the consciousness 
of pain and poverty and hunger. The stars paled 
slowly, and the grey light changed to rose as they 
leaned on the rails and watched the coming of the 
dawn. 

Still the battle went on. The thirst of Summers 
seemed to grow with every passing moment to a 
fire of craving that could not be extinguished. He 
tried every ruse and every plea that his fertile 
mind could invent. The minister was conscious 
only of overpowering weariness. He could 
scarcely summon energy enough to resist. It was 
exhausting even to think. 

Slowly they walked back. The saloons were 
beginning to open. 

" I've got to have just one ball," said Summers. 
" I won't be gone a minute." 

The minister had not the physical strength for 
further argument. " All right, go ahead if you 
must. I'll go in with you," he said, hoping that 
he could get Summers out after the first glass. 

Summers looked at him in solemn disgust. 

** D'ye think I could get any soshul enjoyment 



126 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

swallerin' a glass of whisky wid you standin' there 
and lookin' at me like that? " he asked. " Sure it 
would sour on me stummick. I ain't a church-goin' 
man, but I've got too much respect fer the cloth 
to be drinkin' in the prisince of a minister." 

He turned away from the saloon. *' You'll be 
the death o' me, sure 1 " he added with a sigh. 

Fortunately he took his course past the church. 
The minister's hope revived. While Summers 
fixed his eye on a saloon on the opposite corner, he 
darted to the Church House and pounded on the 
door. The sexton stuck a towsled head out of 
the window, and blinked at him in sleepy astonish- 
ment. " Get on your clothes and come out here 
and jolly Summers awhile," he said. " I'm played 
out." 

The sexton grasped the situation and his trou- 
sers swiftly and almost simultaneously, and the 
minister shouted to Summers who was half way 
across to the saloon: "Oh, Summers! Come 
here a minute! Dave wants to tell you some- 
thing!" 

Summers returned with a look of despair and 
disgust on his face. But Dave rose nobly to the 
emergency. He plunged Into a lively discussion 
of ward politics, and soon had the man's attention. 
The minister was too exhausted to follow the con- 
versation. 

" It is incredible that any human being could 
want anything so much as that man wants a glass 



A BATTLE BY NIGHT 127 

of whisky," he thought as he leaned against the 
fence. " Why, if one man wanted to reform New 
;York politics and pursued his aim with that same 
inflexibility of will, the city would be transformed 
to virtue in a month." 

It was seven o'clock at last. 

" It's time I went to work," said Summers, look- 
ing up as the bells struck. " I'll be off." 

" All right," said the minister. " We'll go up 
and see the Lady of Good Cheer, and then you 
can go." 

" But I'm goln' to have my roslner," said Sum- 
mers. 

" I don't care about that," said the minister. 
" I promised you shouldn't drink till you saw the 
Lady of Good Cheer. After you see her, you can 
do as you choose." 

Summers looked at him with a disgusted grin. 

"Well, you are a sticker, for fair!" he said. 
" Are you through with me after I see her? " 

" My responsibility ends then, and I'll bother 
you no more." 

" Come on then, you can't go too quick for 
me ! " said Summers. 

They took the car uptown and soon were await- 
ing the Lady of Good Cheer in the little parlour 
of her house. She came down fresh and bright, 
with a happy light in her eyes. 

" Oh, Mr. Summers," she cried. " I'm so glad 
to see you. I knew you would come. You're go- 



128 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

ing to promise me to give up the drink forever, 
now, aren't you?" 

The minister turned aside. He could not bear 
to be a witness to her disappointment. She had 
been so sure of this man, and so strong In her 
faith In him. Now she was to be sadly disillu- 
sioned when she saw his purpose, more firmly 
rooted than ever after a night of deprivation, to 
drink the moment he left her presence. Then to 
his utter amazement Summers looked around with 
a sheepish grin, and said: " All right! here goes. 
I'll promise." 



XIV 

THE GLORY IN THE GLOOM 

It was one of those sweltering summer days for 
which New York is famous, but it was not the heat 
that oppressed the Lady of Good Cheer as she ran 
up the stairs of a miserable tenement in Hamilton 
Street. Ordinarily, she was optimistic enough, 
and even when every one else had lost sight of the 
star of hope, she still kept the vision of a last, 
lingering gleam. But she had come upon many 
terrible scenes behind the walls of these tenements, 
and to-day she had the uncomfortable sense that 
some hideous discovery awaited her on the other 
side of the closed door on the third floor front, and 
she shuddered slightly as she knocked upon it. 

It was not a very pleasing voice that invited her 
to come in, nor was it an especially attractive apart- 
ment into which she entered. The table had not 
been cleared from the recent meal, which, she 
judged by the appearance of the children who 
greeted her, had been taken externally as well as 
internally. A dish or two of soup had been upset 
upon the table and was trickling down to the floor, 
which was in its turn littered with a debris of bits 
of food and rags in the middle, and in the corners 
some greasy blankets and dirty comforters on 

129 



130 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

which the children had slept. Everywhere were 
the evidences of a simple life with no attempt at 
division of labour or classification of function, but 
with all the utensils of eating, sleeping, clothing 
and washing mingled in a promiscuous disarray on 
furniture and floor. Mrs. Black, the lady of the 
house, was barefooted, her ragged dress was open 
at the throat, and her tangled hair was tumbling 
down her back. The corners of her mouth 
drooped, and her eyes were red and watery, a mod- 
ern Niobe, by whose side her ancient prototype 
seemed almost cheerful. One child, whose face 
was smudged by soup and dirt, clung to her skirts 
and howled, and the sick baby in her arms moaned 
and sobbed. The two other children were rolling 
on the floor and pummeling each other, somewhat 
to the alarm of the cockroaches that had been feed- 
ing on the crumbs and were now scuttling away to 
their favourite retreat behind the picture on the 
wall. 

The Lady of Good Cheer stood in the midst of 
this chaos, reflecting that the condition of the room 
seemed to call for critical comment. But she knew 
that cleanliness is an expensive matter where one 
Is called upon to take continual care of a sick baby 
and three ailing children, and to do the cooking 
and washing at the same time, and she realised 
that Mrs. Black had no income for luxuries. Be- 
sides, she had no attention to give to superficial 
issues just now, for she feared that this little home, 



THE GLORY IN THE GLOOM 131 

in which she had been interested for many months, 
was threatened with overwhelming disaster. 

During the last winter, in the course of her 
rounds, the Lady of Good Cheer had entered one 
of those unique and far-famed hostelries which at 
present occupy some of the old houses adjoining 
the Cherry Street mansion once occupied by Gen- 
eral Washington. They do not presume to offer 
guests a room or even a bed. Lodgings are rented 
at the rate of five cents a spot, the spot including 
a heap of rags that have been accumulating more 
odour than sanctity from Revolutionary days, and 
also a can of frothy substance known as mixed ale, 
the mixture being a minimum of ale and a maxi- 
mum of old rinsings. To this hospitable place 
there repaired nightly some twenty or thirty ancient 
hags, ragged, maudlin with drink, and in general 
well equipped to play extempore the part of Mac- 
beth'g witches. They were busied in selecting 
their spots and among their grotesquely repulsive 
faces, the Lady of Good Cheer noted one which 
by contrast seemed quite angelic. Its owner was 
young, at least, and sober and reasonably clean. 
The Lady of Good Cheer inquired her reasons for 
sleeping In such a loathsome place, and she burst 
into tears, and told the old story of a home broken 
up because a man had too little to do and too much 
to drink. 

The Lady of Good Cheer was interested in her 
new find, and promptly hunted up the husband to 



132 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

see if there was in him the timber from which a 
home might be built. With his smooth cheek and 
beardless chin and soft brown eyes, he seemed an 
amazingly boyish creature to have the responsi- 
bility of a wife and four children, but she liked his 
clear-cut profile and quick, deft movements, and. 
soon discovered that his hands w^ere unusually 
clever, and that the muscles of his lithe body were 
like iron. He had been ruined by his ver}^ clever- 
ness. He was handy at every trade, and had 
never learned any thoroughly. The man w^ho 
" can do anything " Is only employed where men 
are willing to take anybody. This year with thou- 
sands of skilled workmen Idle, no one seemed to 
need the services of Black. He was frank enough 
to admit, however, that in his case there w^ere other 
causes of disaster. He stated plainly that " drink 
was his curse," and so serious a curse that no charm 
had proved adequate to remove it. He explained 
that he had taken the pledge from the priest, but 
it " had not worked." It was evidently the fault 
of the priest or of the pledge. His conversation 
with the Lady of Good Cheer gave him hopes that 
a pledge administered by her might prove more 
potent. Religion was a science as unfamiliar to 
him as calculus, but he was convinced that without 
Its assistance a pledge was an absurdity. So he 
knelt with her and In words whose earnestness and 
sincerity made up for their theological ambiguity, 
sought the power to keep his promise. 



THE GLORY IN THE GLOOM 13^ 

When this preliminary step had been achieved, 
the Lady of Good Cheer found rooms for him in 
Hamilton Street. The neighbourhood was not 
choice in this most disreputable street in the ward, 
but she selected the rooms not for their social 
prestige or external charm, but because the rent 
was but $7.50 a month. She furnished them with 
the rudimental equipment for housekeeping, and 
the Blacks and their four children moved in. The 
best she could do in the way of work was to secure 
for Black the chance to clean up a down-town 
office every morning at a wage of $2.50 a week, 
and, starting with this, he had made a most heroic 
effort to maintain his home. But to support a 
family on $2.50 a week and pay a rent of $7.50 
a month requires more necromancy than heroism. 
Black tried every means and exhausted every ex- 
pedient. He would hang around the market and 
pick up here and there a fish that had been repudi- 
ated by the dealers, and carry it home in triumph 
to satisfy the little mouths that were always clam- 
ouring for food. He tramped the streets in every 
unoccupied hour, looking for a chance to earn a 
few pennies to buy bread. But there was never 
enough, and each day he came back to face the 
reproaches of his pale wife and listen to the la- 
ments of his little ones, who were always hungry 
and ailing. It was a hard enough trial of faith 
for a church warden to behave with becoming self- 
control in that breathless sweltering heat, and for 



134 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

a man goaded by despair and unreasonable re- 
proaches, and maddened by an unsatisfied appetite, 
It required a self-denying fortitude little short of 
the miraculous to return on pay-day, past the long 
row of saloons with the odour of alcohol heavy in 
the air, and bring back untouched every penny of 
his earnings. Like some sensitive instrument, the 
Lady of Good Cheer had felt the steadily increas- 
ing tension. To-day was his pay-day, and she 
knew it would be a crisis In his life. There was 
for him no middle ground. One glass meant mad- 
ness and utter ruin. 

These were the reasons that as soon as she was 
free that afternoon she had hurried as swiftly as 
her feet would carry her to the tenement In Ham- 
ilton Street. Now she was searching Mrs. 
Black's face in the hope of being assured that 
her dark anticipations had been unfounded. But 
Mrs. Black was never what could be called a cheer- 
ful or animated person. On her happiest days she 
stood with slouching shoulders and watery eyes 
and a deprecatory smile on her drooping mouth, 
and her attitude was as depressing to the observer 
as the sight of a rain-drenched cypress In a bog. 
To-day she overflowed with tragedy. There 
seems to exist among the poorest the consciousness 
that for them the only chance of playing an heroic 
or important part In the eyes of the world lies In 
some desperate calamity or crime, and Mrs. Black 
was uplifted by the sense that she was the heroine 



THE GLORY IN THE GLOOM 135 

of an important drama. In this role of leading 
lady her face lost its expression of weary discour- 
agement and acquired a tragic animation. She 
wasted no breath in greetings, but plunged at once 
to the crisis. 

'* He's gone back to the drink! '' she cried. " I 
always knew he would! I've been a tellin' him so 
every day since he swore off ! To-day he got that 
mad at me fer sayin' it, that he run off and drank 
to get the nerve to answer me back. That's the 
talk he gives me. An' he comes back and tells me 
I'm a liar and he'll prove it. An' when I tells him, 
what else could I expect from him wid a low-down 
drinkin' mother, and no one knowin' his father, he 
ups and calls me all the names — you never heard 
such langwidges ! He was somethin' fierce ! 
Such a row he made the neighbours all come runnin* 
in, and then off he goes like a crazy man. I was 
scared o' me life, and I run up stairs to me sister, 
Mrs. Summers, on the top floor. Well, sure 
enough, after gettin' a drink or two, back he comes. 
I'd locked the door o' me house, and I hears him a 
poundin' and a cursin' and me sister calls out to 
him from the entry above to stop his noise. Wid 
that he begins to call her all the names, shoutin' so 
all the neighbours could hear. An' me pore old 
mither — sure he said she was nothin' but a dirty 
old — savin' your prisince, I'd niver be tellin' you 
the words what he said. An' me sister, she tells 
him mighty plain who was his father and his grand- 



136 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

mother and all the rest of his family. An* wid 
that he comes a rushin' up the stairs, an' me sister 
who'd been *washin' and was standin' over her tubs 
in the entry, — I'll not be sayin' she hadn't been 
drinkin' a bit too, — she yells : * Sure he's comin' 
to murdher us ! ' and she picks up a tub full o' 
water wid both hands and gives it a heave over the 
balusters right on top of him. You should 'ave 
heard the row! The tub lit on his hand, and 
smashed up two of his fingers, and the soap-suds 
covered him wid lather till he looked like the wild 
man o' Borneo. I never see such a lookin' thing 
in all me life. An' yell ! — say ye could 'ave 
heard him clean to the Battery ! The neighbours 
caught him and shoved him down stairs, and him 
swearin' he'd buy a pistol and come back and shoot 
us all!" 

This was the drama, rehearsed with many 
shakes of the head and duckings of the tongue. 
It was a sad ending, this hideous drunken brawl, 
to all the plans the Lady of Good Cheer had made. 
Yet after all she could not help feeling a bit proud 
of Black after all. Six months of starvation and 
dubious fish, combined with a complaining wife and 
four ailing children, is a stern test for any hero. 
Even a Siegfried might have failed to meet it. 
/Vt any rate he had not disappointed his wife, 
whose self-satisfaction in being able to say, " I told 
you so," seemed undimmed by any consciousness 
that it was she who had driven him back to " the 



THE GLORY IN THE GLOOM 137 

drink." The Lady of Good Cheer could only 
regret that her influence had not been constant 
enough to counteract this unfailing stimulus of 
pessimistic suggestion. There was nothing to be 
done now but to stand up and try to repair the 
damage. She provided that the terror-stricken 
wife should take refuge with Mrs. Kiley, another 
sister who lived two blocks away in Monroe 
Street, and went home to spend an anxious night. 
Black, however, felt no need of assistance or 
pity. The alcohol burnt in his brain like a flame. 
He was no longer a helpless, ragged wretch, kicked 
out of offices when he asked for work, and sneak- 
ing around the markets to pick up refuse. He was 
a giant; he could handle an army of policemen 
with one hand! Moreover, he had a great voca- 
tion: to purge the world of a false woman whom 
he had once thought the most charming and fas- 
cinating of creatures. He, too, was impressed by 
dramatic possibilities. Here was a thing to be 
played in the Windsor Theatre upon the Bowery. 
He drew his money and bought a pistol. He 
loaded the pistol, and sought his house, his head 
up, his plans made. Now he had power; now he 
could defy the world ! He crept stealthily up the 
steps of his house, and with superb dramatic effect 
flung open the door of his room and shouted: 
*' Prepare to meet thy God ! " He had seen the 
words hung as a motto in Dennett's ten-cent res- 
taurant underneath a sign, " Mince pie, five cents." 



138 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

The association with the pie had not seemed sig- 
nificant to him and the words struck him as impres- 
sive and appropriate. But there was no answer. 
The room was empty. He waited sometime for 
his wife's return, planning out a dramatic crisis that 
would astonish the world when reported in The 
Journal, Then when it grew late and Mrs. Black 
still did not appear, he thought of Mrs. Kiley's 
house, and to Mrs. Kiley's house he hurried, his 
exaltation increasing as the end drew near. 

Mrs. Kiley lived in a rear house on the ground 
floor. Black entered the house in front, and 
passed through the hall to the court behind. 
Should he call her out, he wondered, and shoot her 
without warning? No, she must have time to re- 
flect on her sins, and to realise that her doom had 
come at last at the hands of an innocent and aveng- 
ing husband. He looked out through the door 
into the court upon which Mrs. Kiley's windows 
opened. There in the open window sat Mrs. 
Black, dishevelled and ragged as usual. Now was 
his chance ! He stepped forth imitating as well 
as he could the voice of the hero at the Windsor 
Theatre, he shouted: "Are you ready to die? " 
and pointed his pistol directly at her. The effect 
equalled his most ardent expectations. Mrs. 
Black turned and saw the pistol. Her sallow face 
turned pasty white, and shriek after shriek filled 
the court. Mrs. Kiley screamed. The neigh- 
bours came rushing out, but before any of them 



THE GLORY IN THE GLOOM 139 

could move, there was a loud, sharp report, and 
Mrs. Black sank to the floor with a groan. The 
screams redoubled, and from a dozen doors men 
rushed out upon the avenging husband. 

In a moment it appeared that Mrs. Black was 
only frightened. The bullet had passed over her 
head and had struck into the wall. As the men 
rushed toward him to seize him. Black stood look- 
ing at them calmly and contemptuously. Didn't 
they know that he could destroy the whole world 
with one hand? He would show them. At the 
sight of the smoking pistol in his hand, they grew 
cautious. One of them slipped out and called a 
policeman, and while Black faced the men from 
the house, the policeman slipped up behind and 
wrenched the pistol from his hand. Black turned 
on him with such sudden ferocity that the officer 
went down with a crash. He rapped on the pave- 
ment and in a moment two more officers appeared. 
A fit of madness was upon Black. What were 
policemen? — he could brush them away like flies ! 
As he fell upon them, his slight wiry body seemed 
charged by electric force. His arms flew like the 
spokes of a driving wheel. The policemen felt as 
though a cyclone had struck them, and went down 
like ninepins before they knew what had happened. 
They drew their clubs and attacked him, but he 
was insensible to pain. He made no effort to de- 
fend himself as their blows fell on his head and 
shoulders. He fought with fists and elbows, with 



HO BESIDE THE BOWERY 

knees and feet, with head and teeth, and in every 
movement he was as quick as an infuriated wild 
cat. The battle went on witnessed by a gathering 
crowd, and it was not until two more policemen 
came up that they mastered him and carried him 
off writhing, twisting, biting, like a captured tiger, 
while they showered blows on his head. 

The next day the Lady of Good Cheer visited 
Black in the Ludlow Street jail. Through the 
minister she had interviewed the magistrate, and 
told him the story of Black's struggle. Mrs. 
Black was well terrified, but she agreed not to 
press the charge if her husband could be kept away 
from her. The magistrate thought that he might 
be willing to suspend sentence, if the Lady of Good 
Cheer and the minister would agree to be responsi- 
ble for Black. She entered the gloomy building, 
with its three tiers of cells built up within the en- 
closing walls and reached only by little iron fire- 
escapes. She climbed the narrow iron stairs ac- 
companied by an officer, passed along the iron gal- 
lery, and stood at last in front of a grating behind 
which Black was confined. She peered through the 
bars of the iron cage, and there in the darkness of 
the narrow cell, seated on the pallet on one side, 
she saw a form crouched and bent, with head sunk 
low. "Mr. Black!" she called. The head 
lifted, and she saw not a face, but a shapeless mass 
of bruises, blackened, swollen eyes, a disfigured 
nose, cut lips and a head whose numerous gashes 



THE GLORY IN THE GLOOM 141 

had soaked with blood the white bandage that 
swathed it. He looked up at her in a dazed way. 
The exaltation and madness was gone. His great 
battle with the social order was over, and once 
more he was only a poverty-stricken wretch, friend- 
less and helpless in the clutch of that iron monster, 
Law. He knew that he had incurred a penalty of 
seven years in jail. 

" Looks pretty bad,'' said the officer. 
" Pounded his head against the iron bars like a 
crazy man last night." 

The Lady of Good Cheer thought it more prob- 
able that his wounds were the result of the usual 
punishment inflicted for resistance, but she said 
nothing. She spoke quietly with Black of his 
escapade and her disappointment, but he only 
looked at her dully. 

At last she said: " If I can get the judge to 
let you off, will you promise to do just what I 
say?" 

A sudden flash of light came Into his eyes. 

" Can ye get me off. Oh, can ye get me out o' 
this," he cried in a low frightened voice. " Fer 
God's sake get me out if ye can ! " 

" Will you promise never to touch the drink, 
and to live on the West Side, and never to see 
your wife? " she asked. 

" Sure I will, — I'll promise anything. Oh, fer 
God's sake, help me out of this I " 

'* Remember if you touch a drop of liquor or 



142 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

are seen with your wife, even a moment, you are 
liable to be sent back to jail on the instant." 

" I won't never break my promise, so help me 
God," he muttered. 

Then while curious faces were peering through 
the gratings of the neighbouring cells, he repeated 
after her the solemn promise to take up again the 
dreary struggle for existence that he had just 
abandoned to play his part in the drama of his 
disastrous battle with the social order. The mag- 
istrate was inclined to think that when his fears 
wore off, he would return to his evil habits, but 
when Black appeared before him, he delivered to 
him a fatherly lecture on his misdemeanour. 
Black was dismissed under suspended sentence, and 
he went out bewildered, hardly able to realise his 
good fortune. He had seen himself surrounded 
by those iron walls for seven long years and now 
here he was, a free man, jostled by the swarming 
Jews of Grand Street. 

The Lady of Good Cheer found rooms for him 
on the West Side, and before long secured work 
which brought him better pay. It seemed like a 
modern miracle, but Black kept his word. 

A month or so later the Lady of Good Cheer 
was walking home from an evening meeting. It 
was a glorious moonlight night, and after the in- 
tense heat of the day, the people of the tenements 
were enjoying it to the full. Sidewalks were filled 
with laughing couples, and doorsteps were crowded 



THE GLORY IN THE GLOOM 143 

with loosely clad housewives gossiping with their 
neighbours. On a step just at the corner sat a 
young couple ; so absorbed in one another that they 
caught the attention of the Lady of Good Cheer. 
How could there be romance in lives such as theirs, 
she wondered, or any possibility of escape from 
the dull facts of poverty and hunger and ceaseless 
toil? The man's arm stole around the woman 
and he drew her gently toward him. As the 
woman moved, the moon shone full upon her face, 
and the Lady of Good Cheer was astonished to 
recognise the drooping mouth and pale cheeks of 
Mrs. Black. But the watery eyes seemed to shine 
with an unaccustomed light, and her face in the 
moonlight looked almost pretty. The Lady of 
Good Cheer took a step forward, and saw the face 
of the man beside her. She knew the clear cut 
features and keen eyes in a moment. It was Black 
himself. 

The thought of rebuking Black never once en- 
tered the mind of the Lady of Good Cheer. She 
did not send him back to jail. She went quietly 
on her way, with a sort of exultation in her heart, 
to know that even in the midst of degradation and 
hunger, hatred and murder, the love of a man for 
his wife is a thing strong enough and beautiful 
enough to conquer fear and hate and the dread of 
weary toil, and to cover them over with the mystic 
glory of romance. 

Not long after, a pleasant set of rooms in a 



144 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

street near by was secured, and Black and his 
family were established to start again the great 
struggle together, this time with better chance of 
success. And until the strength of the brave man 
yielded at last to the dread disease that haunts the 
tenements, that home continued to be a joy to the 
Lady of Good Cheer. 



XV 

THE BRIGHT SIDE 

'' To he blind is to see the bright side of life/' 

— Helen Keller. 

The Lady of Good Cheer was conducting the 
minister and a group of singers from the church 
on one of their Sunday afternoon tours. The 
house they entered was a queer old edifice, built of 
brick and standing on a prominent corner, but its 
sadly dilapidated walls had given up all pretensions 
to the pride of life. The Lady of Good Cheer 
ran lightly up the ancient staircase, on which chaos 
had left its marks, and soon her slender form dis- 
appeared in the dark attic hall. The others 
groped their way after her and presently found 
themselves in a large gloomy front room. The 
shutters were closed and the windows shut, and 
the air was heavy with the odour of unwashed 
clothes and rags and greasy garments. A shrill 
barking greeted the visitors, and a miserable little 
black terrier rushed ,out and began excitedly to 
worry their ankles. 

The minister threw open the shutters, and the 
light shone in upon an aged woman sitting crouched 
in a huge broken armchair. On the face of the 

145 



146 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

woman was the strained, anxious look characteristic 
of the blind, and she turned her sightless eyes 
from side to side, as though following the un- 
wonted steps and commotion in her silent chamber. 
She tried to struggle to her feet to meet her guests, 
but the Lady of Good Cheer was at her side with a 
greeting of sympathy, and bade her keep her seat. 
At the sound of her visitor's voice, a light came 
into the sightless face. She seemed to see the 
Lady of Good Cheer in each tone and inflection, as 
others saw her soul in the high brow and aquiline 
nose, and in the firm lips and deep set eyes. For 
her voice was one of those that seems to thrill 
with a thousand familiar associations, — a voice 
that one has heard from earliest childhood, so soft 
in sympathy and so firm in command. 

" Is your son here? " the Lady of Good Cheer 
asked. She had just equipped the old woman's 
son with a new outfit of wearing apparel, complete 
even to necktie and collar. 

" He's not here, but he promised to come," said 
the old woman. " He's a good boy to me. He's 
all I have. I don't know what I should do with- 
out him. He takes care of me, and cooks for me, 
and keeps the house clean. I can't do nothing 
now but sit still. It's a hard thing to be Wind," 
she added with a sigh and then her face bright- 
ening, " But there ain't many that have a boy like 
mine to take care of them." 

The Lady of Good Cheer looked around the 



THE BRIGHT SIDE 147 

room. It did not look as If It had been cleaned in 
years. A dirty comforter or two lay where they 
had been thrown In the corners. The floor was 
littered with soiled rags and broken crockery and 
bones. The wretched little terrier who was never 
taken out had added to the unspeakable filth of the 
place. The furniture had once been handsome, 
but the upholstery was soiled and torn and the cur- 
tains ragged. 

" Yes, he's a good boy," the old woman went 
on. " I never could live here If he didn't clean It 
up and look out for everything for me." 

** Didn't you own this house once? " asked the 
Lady of Good Cheer. 

" Yes," said the old lady. " I had plenty of 
money then, and owned this house and the one 
over the way, but my boy Is unlucky. He's good 
to his mother, but he's very unlucky, and somehow 
all the money's gone now, and we had to sell the 
house and move to the attic here. But I kept all 
my best furniture, and you see I'm quite fine up 
here." And the sightless eyes travelled proudly 
around the room over the furniture and curtains 
and pictures, that In her sight still retained their 
former elegance. 

Just then there was an uncertain step in the hall 
and the door opened and the '' boy " entered. 
The Lady of Good Cheer looked at him aghast. 
He was a man of about 30, clad in ragged trou- 
sers that a torn belt confined with some uncertainty 



148 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

about the waist, a rusty cutaway coat, soiled and 
torn, and a dirty yellow shirt that had no collar and 
was open at the throat. His face was unshaven, 
and his hair unbrushed. He hung his head, and 
looked about with shifty eyes. 

" Is It my boy? " said the old woman, her voice 
thrilling with pride and joy. " I'm so glad he's 
come. I want you to know my boy," she said to 
the minister. " There aren't many poor blind 
mothers as have so fine a boy to look after them 
and take care of them. I can't thank God enough 
for what he's left me when he took away my 
sight," and a tear stole from the sightless eyes and 
trickled down the furrowed cheek. " But where 
are the clothes ? " said the Lady of Good Cheer 
to him. " I lost 'em. I had bad luck," said the 
*' boy," sotto voce and looking at her with his 
shifty eyes. As he spoke, they noticed that his 
breath reeked with vile alcohol. The mother 
caught the last words. " Yes, poor boy, he always 
has bad luck. I don't know why the world is so 
hard on him. Seems as if God was against him.'* 

They had come to hold a little meeting at the 
old lady's request. They found seats on the 
ragged furniture, and sang the old songs she 
wanted to hear and read some comforting words. 
Then came the prayer, and each looked anxiously 
about for an available spot on that unspeakably 
dirty floor, where they might kneel without per- 
manent damage to their garments. They finished 



THE BRIGHT SIDE 149 

the meeting successfully, though the terrier was 
the cause of some incoherence in the petitions when 
he jumped suddenly upon the minister's back as he 
knelt in prayer, much to the delight of the more 
unregenerate youth in the party, as they peered 
between their fingers to discover the cause of the 
hiatus in the minister's ideas, and discovered his 
desperate efforts to dislodge the little beast. Even 
the Lady of Good Cheer could not keep her eyes 
fast closed during the distracting scene, and the 
sightless eyes of the old lady were the only ones 
that saw nothing to mar the solemnity of the little 
service. When they had finished she thanked 
them for their prayers with tears in her eyes, say- 
ing that It was many, many years since she had been 
to church. 

** And I have so much to thank God for, I know 
I ought to go," she added. " You see my money's 
all gone now, and if I hadn't a boy who would take 
care of his old mother and bring her In something 
to eat. It would go hard with me." 

" Did you get that jelly, I sent you? " asked the 
Lady of Good Cheer, casually. 

" Yes," said the old lady. " I've got some of 
It still." 

" That isn't much of a recommendation for it," 
said the Lady of Good Cheer, her eyes twinkling. 
" I'm afraid It didn't taste very good." 

" Oh, it Is delicious," said the old lady. '' I 
never tasted anything so good. I don't want to 



I50 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

use it up, so I take a teaspoonful and put it in a cup 
of hot water." She interrupted herself. " You 
see my son has been very unlucky lately and I 
haven't had any tea, but the jelly and water was 
even better than tea." 

" What did you have to eat with it? " asked the 
Lady of Good Cheer. 

" Oh, my boy always brings me a bit of bread, 
that is almost always, except when he's very un- 
lucky. Yes, God is very good to me, and I hope 
you'll thank the lady that sent that jelly, and tell 
her I enjoyed it a whole month." 

They said good-bye and started down the dark 
stairs. *' I believe the poor old soul has lived on 
that jelly and water the past three weeks," said the 
Lady of Good Cheer. '' I had no idea she was in 
want of food. She is always so cheerful and never 
complains. I shall send her in a good meal right 
away." 

''Who will cook it?" asked the minister. 

" I'll run in and cook it myself," she answered. 
" I would not trust it to that son. He would sell 
it or pawn it, as he did his clothes. And if he 
didn't, think of eating anything that he cooked I " 
and she shuddered. " I took the oculist to see 
her this week," she went on, "but he says there 
is no hope. She can never regain her sight." 
And the minister murmured involuntarily, " Thank 
God." 



XVI 

A MAN WITH FIVE LIVES 

" Won't ye come down ter my house and talk wid 
me husband? Sure he's goin' on like a crazy man 
and I'm scared o' me life." 

Mrs. Ferguson stood at the church house door, 
where she had just caught the Lady of Good Cheer 
as she was sallying forth to her work. As she 
spoke she tried to hide her disordered hair be- 
neath the grey shawl in which her dumpy 
figure was wrapped. Her stout round face was 
disturbed from its customary placidity, and her 
narrow, pale eyes, peeping out above fat bulging 
cheeks, surveyed the Lady of Good Cheer anx- 
iously. 

'* There's no one he'll listen to but you and the 
minister, and he's like to kill himself now," she 
went on. 

'* Of course I'll come," said the Lady of Good 
Cheer. 

She stopped to leave word for the minister and 
the nurse to follow her, and then hurried down the 
street, toward the river, through crowds of bare- 
foot, ragged children and Jewish merchants. Mrs. 
Ferguson lived on the top floor of a miserable 



152 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

tenement In Water Street, opposite some great 
warehouses and factories. 

As she and the Lady of Good Cheer made their 
way up the dark, narrow stairs, and drew near 
the room, they heard muttered curses, then a shout 
and a heavy thud. They threw open the door of 
a bare room, scantily furnished with a bed, a table, 
a stove and a few chairs. In the middle of the 
room stood a heavily built man of medium height 
dressed In the soiled blue jumper and belted trou- 
sers commonly worn by teamsters. He was mut- 
tering to himself, and as they entered, he turned 
suddenly and struck a furious blow behind him. 

" There ! you cursed Dago ! I gave you one 
that time! What do you mean, you robbers, 
creeping around behind me like that? You can't 
stick no knife in my back. I'll show you if you 
can," and he made a furious rush across the room 
striking madly with both arms. 

His heavy-featured face was distorted, his pale 
blue eyes rolled wildly under bushy brows, and his 
lips moved convulsively beneath his thick brown 
moustache. 

" You see, he's got the D. T.'s bad," said Mrs. 
Ferguson in a whisper. 

The Lady of Good Cheer took a step forward. 
She looked unusually trim and slight In her close- 
fitting suit of dark blue. She held her head high, 
and her lips were straight and determined, though 
she spoke lightly, as if in casual friendly greeting. 



A MAN WITH FIVE LIVES 153 

" Good morning, Mr. Ferguson," she said. " I 
am glad I found you at home this morning. 
I haven't had a chance to see you in a long 
time." 

The man paused, turned and faced her. He 
passed his hand over his eyes and brushed back the 
tangled hair from his brow. The wild expression 
faded from his face, and he looked at her with a 
quiet, benevolent smile, and spoke in his usual slow, 
gentle manner. 

" Why how d'ye do, ma'am, I didn't see you 
was here. I'm glad to see you. Come in and sit 
down." 

" I see you're off from work to-day," she went 
on as she took a seat, watching him closely with 
her deep-set eyes, as if she was trying to hold him 
with their gaze. 

He returned her look with a pleased frankness. 
" Yes, I took a day off. I wanted a rest." A 
sudden expression of fear came into his eyes, and 
he looked furtively to the corner where the bed 
stood. " But these cursed Dagos give me no 
peace. They follow me everywhere," he said 
savagely. 

*' I don't see them now," she said quietly. " I 
think they must have gone away." 

He gave a sudden shout. " Look ! there's one 
under my bed," and he rushed furiously across the 
room. 

The Lady of Good Cheer stepped swiftly to his 



154 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

side, and put her hand on his shoulder as he 
stooped to look under the bed. 

" Come and sit down," she said. " I'll watch 
and see that no one will hurt you. I can warn you 
if any one is creeping up behind. Never mind the 
man under the bed. He can't do any harm." 

Ferguson went back meekly and took his seat. 
The madness had faded from his eyes and he was 
placid again. 

" I don't seem to see them any more now you're 
here," he said. " I guess you scared them away." 
He gave a sigh of relief. *' I'm glad they've 
gone. They've been trying to murder me all day. 
I've had lots of narrow escapes in my time, and 
I'd hate to be done up by a rascally Dago." 

" What escapes have you had? " asked the Lady 
of Good Cheer, hoping to keep his attention until 
the hallucinations should be dissipated. 

" Well," he said, " it's a queer thing for sure, 
but I've been killed, as you might say, four times 
already. The first time, I was workin' in a grain 
elevator. They was hoistin' the grain up In a lift, 
and I was up at the top of the shaft to unload it. 
.You know how tall them grain elevators Is, taller'n 
a six-story tenement. Well, I went to the edge of 
the shaft to look over and see If the car at the 
bottom wasn't pretty near loaded. I was hangin' 
over the edge and lookln' way down In the dark 
at the men piling oats on the car, when of a sudden, 
one foot slipped on a pile of oats on the edge. I 



A MAN WITH FIVE LIVES 155 

made a grab to save meself, but it was too late. 
Down I went into the dark old shaft. Well, say, 
now I It was a great fall for sure I I thought I 
was a dead man, of course. Seems like I thought 
over all me sins and everythin' I ever done, while 
I was a f allin' down that there dark hole. And all 
the while the floor was comin' nearer, and I was 
thinking ' In a minute now, there's an end of you,' 
and then I struck, and thinks I, * Now, I'm dead.' 
Well, It was all dark, and I thought I must be bur- 
ied deep in the earth. I could feel it all around 
me, in me mouth and in me eyes. And I began to 
try to get it out of me mouth. And then I found 
that me hands were stretched up above me head, 
and I couldn't get them down. And while I was 
suffocatin' and tryin' to breathe, I felt somethin' 
catch hold of me hands and it pulled and pulled, 
and the next minute up I come, and there I was. 
sittin' in the oats in the car at the bottom of the 
shaft. I went in feet first — clean over me head 
and over me hands that were stretched up. And 
they dug in and found me hands, and pulled me 
out. I was near smothered, but I wasn't hurt, not 
even a little bit." 

The Lady of Good Cheer expressed her amaze- 
ment at this astonishing escape, and seeing his eyes 
begin to wander anxiously toward the bed, she 
asked: "You say there were other escapes. 
Tell me the next one." 

" Well," he said, " that was some years later. 



156 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

I was livin' in a tenement down in New Chambers 
Street, next the coal-yard there. It was a terrible 
hot summer, and we uster go up on the roof in the 
afternoon to get cooled off. There wasn't no 
railing to the roof, and it sloped down to the edge, 
so the old woman, she didn't like it much, and 
she'd sit away up in the middle where it was hot. 
But I found a spot down near the edge behind a 
chimbley where it was cool. One afternoon, I got 
home from work early and went up on the roof to 
sit, while the old woman was getting the supper. 
There was two or three women settin' around up 
there, and I went down to my chimbley and lay 
down, and in a minute I was fast asleep. Well, I 
must have had a bad dream and jumped, fer the 
next thing I knew I was just rollin' off the edge of 
the roof. I gave a yell like an Indian, and 
grabbed at the eaves, but it was no go. The 
women on the roof screeched and yelled, ' Fire ! 
Fire ! ' at the top of their voices, but it didn't stop 
me. Down I went through the air, five stories 
down ! Say, but I was scared ! I thought, * This 
time I'm dead for sure! Down I come with a 
bang, and then all was dark. Well, the next thing 
I knew, I felt some one pourin' water over me, and 
there I was sittin' on a great pile of this black coal 
dust in the coal yard, with a lot of firemen around 
squirting me with a hose. Some one heard the 
women cry, * Fire I ' and turned in an alarm. The 
firemen came rushing around, and some one told 



A MAN WITH FIVE LIVES i57 

them rd just fell off the roof. So they sees there 
was a big hole in the pile of fine coal next the tene- 
ment, and they digs me out and washes me off with 
a hose. I was a sight to make ye scream, but it 
never hurt me a bit. I walked up and ate my 
supper just the same as ever." 

The Lady of Good Cheer ventured to imply 
that there might be some inaccuracy of detail in 
this story. 

" No, Tm givin' it to ye straight. Sure as I 
stand here, it happened just like I'm tellin' ye. 
You can ask me wife." 

" You certainly didn't have any more such ad- 
ventures ? " she asked. 

" Sure, I did," said Ferguson. *' The next hap- 
pened two years after when I was workin' wid the 
city. They put me on one of the scows that carries 
the sewage down the harbour. I had to make the 
trip every day, an' I never liked the job much. 
The old scow had a mast and boom, so as they 
could rig up a sail when the wind was right to help 
the tug along. Well, one day the water was 
rough, and the old scow was bouncin' and sloppin' 
along and I was settin' in the stern pretendin' to 
steer her. But I got kinder sleepy with the rockin' 
of the boat, and the next thing I knew, she gave a 
terrible big rock and the boom swung clean over 
and caught me right side o' the head, and over I 
went, kersplash! I never could swim, and if I 
could, it wouldn't have done me no good, I was 



158 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

that stunted. But the man on the tug was a spry 
young feller. I don't understand to this day how 
he done it, but he managed to swing the tug 
around, and he caught me with a hook just as I was 
goin' down the last time. That was a terrible 
close call, and it took him an age to get the water 
out of me and the breath into me again. 

" I took to the shore after that and got onto the 
Street Cleaning Department. I went around with 
a cart, and had to empty them big cans of garbage 
along the street. I had to lift the can — it was 
mighty heavy, you can bet — and climb up on the 
hub, and empty it into the cart. Well, one day it 
had been snowin' and freezing and things was 
slippery. I caught up a monstrous heavy can, and 
climbs up on the hub with it to empty it. Just as 
I gets it up above me head, me foot slips off the 
hub, and down I comes with the can on top o' me. 
Well, what happened, I don't rightly know. They 
said me head was caught between the hub and the 
can. Anyway, me head was all broken and splin- 
tered. They carried me up to the hospital, and 
cut out all the broken bone and splinters and put in 
a silver top to me skull. You can see the scar on 
the top o' me head," he said, pushing aside his 
tangled hair, and showing a huge bare scar in the 
midst of it. " I suppose, that's the reason I gets 
so queer these hot days. It heats up the silver and 
I gets kind o' light headed. I'm a Democrat, ye 
know, and the boys are always jollyin' me about 



A MAN WITH FIVE LIVES 159 

free silver, and silver on the brain. I think that's 
the reason I can't drink. The drink must do some- 
thing to that silver plate, and it sets me pretty 
nigh crazy." 

*' I asked the nurse to bring down some medi- 
cine for you," said the Lady of Good Cheer. 
" You'll take it, won't you, when she brings it? " 

** Oh ! I be glad to get anything to stop me head- 
aches. They're somethin' fierce." 

He was talking naturally now, and seemed free 
from hallucination, and when the nurse arrived 
with the medicine, the Lady of Good Cheer was 
able to assure him that all danger was over for 
the present. 

It was some months later that Mrs. Ferguson 
came to her again. She was in tears, and even 
more agitated than before. 

" Me husband didn't come home last night, an' 
I can't find him nowheres. He ain't been down to 
his work, an' the police don't know nothin' about 
him. Don't seem as if nothin' could have hap- 
pened to him. He's so lucky, he always seems to 
get out of every scrape. But I'm terrible anxious. 
W^hat can have come over him? " 

The Lady of Good Cheer did her best to con- 
sole her. For three days they ransacked the city, 
but they found no trace of him. On the third 
day of the search some workmen, who were work- 
ing at a dump, under a wharf, found a strange 
shape floating in the dark water. They pulled it 



i6o BESIDE THE BOWERY 

ashore, and though the features were unrecognis- 
able, the clothing was soon identified as that of 
Mr. Ferguson. He had entered the gates of 
death for the fifth time, and this time he had not 
returned. 



XVII 

A MODERN MIRACLE 

Hamilton Street was not a spot where one 
would look for marvels of salntliness. The mira- 
cles that seemed appropriate to that dismal alley 
were such as might emanate from the direct inter- 
vention of the powers of darkness that seemed ir- 
resistibly entrenched behind the long line of dirty 
'.and battered tenements and ancient decaying dwel- 
ling houses. Behind the walls that fronted the 
streets was a second line of fortification, a row of 
squalid rear houses, some of which were mere 
tumble-down sheds, others huge crowded hives, 
swarming with strange life. These were invisible 
from the street, and could only be approached 
through dark tunnels beneath the front houses, 
each of which led into a narrow, dirty court full 
of refuse and children, cats and babies and drunken 
sailors. 

As the Lady of Good Cheer passed down the 
narrow dark street, she could not shake off the 
sense that a malevolent foe was watching like some 
huge octopus with baleful gaze from behind the 
close shuttered windows of the disreputable houses, 
ready to reach out a slimy, tentacled arm through 
the swinging side door of some dive and clutch its 

i6i 



i62 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

victim. This feeling was not without grounds. 
Here was the spot where a few days before, a man 
had been sandbagged; there at the corner she had 
seen a sailor knocked down and robbed; here on 
this door step one of the young toughs had been 
shot but a few days since by the leader of a rival 
set. 

Each saloon was the headquarters of a gang 
which lay in wait for hapless sailors. Only a few 
days since the minister had met a crowd of them 
convoying an intoxicated sailor and going through 
his pockets at the same time. They had admin- 
istered knockout drops to him, as he was too vigor- 
ous an old salt for them to handle while he was 
In fighting trim, and just as they met the minister 
the sailor fell unconscious on the pavement. The 
minister requisitioned an empty push cart, dumped 
the senseless man into It, and wheeled him away 
from his would-be plunderers, to the church, where 
he soon came to himself and irritated by his un- 
expected change of environment, proceeded to 
curse the priests and all clergy with a most varied 
and vivid vocabulary. 

This was Hamilton Street. One would cer- 
tainly not search for moral strength in a dirty 
rear tenement behind one of these saloons, or for 
spiritual uplift in the presence of an ignorant and 
corpulent Irishwoman who had been brought up 
among brawls and street fights, to know no other 
inspiration than that of the beer can. Yet it was 



A MODERN MIRACLE 163 

to such a spot that the Lady of Good Cheer liked 
to turn when her work had been especially dis- 
couraging, and she never failed to go away with 
a sense that here was more real evidence of the 
force that lies behind religion than she had ever 
discovered in any cathedral, no matter how Impres- 
sive the service. 

She passed on down the street in front of win- 
dows with broken panes whence hideous old hags 
leered at her, past a " Black and Tan Dive," which 
had just been raided by the police, and turned in at 
last at the side door of one of the saloons. She 
entered a dark narrow tunnel leading under the 
building, and came out into a tiny court In the rear. 
Huge tenements rose all about this little air space, 
all of them filled with ragged, pale-faced children, 
and red-faced, screaming women, and jabbering 
foreigners of every nationality. Into the back end 
of the court a little house had been squeezed, which 
within its contracted walls accommodated ten or a 
dozen families. The Lady of Good Cheer turned 
Into the left-hand basement room. Behind the 
kitchen, which opened on the court, was a dark 
bedroom. But the chief light in this miserable 
basement came from a face within It ; a face round 
as the moon at Its full, and crimson-tinted as the 
sunset. Features seemed lost in the ruddy billows 
of flesh. No scales in the neighbourhood had 
ever ventured to test the weight of that stout 
form, but It was assuredly the most remarkable 



i64 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

ever seen outside of a museum. The woman 
greeted the Lady of Good Cheer with a gladness 
that seemed to irradiate the dull flesh. 

" Oh, I'm so glad to see you; I was hopin' you'd 
come," she said, with a deep sigh of delight. 
*' I'm so glad you come." 

Her voice had a strange quality, a depth of tone, 
an intense earnestness and directness that moved 
strangely those who heard her speak. It was per- 
haps her absolute simplicity and sincerity that gave 
her words the charm of those of a little child. 
Standing beside her the Lady of Good Cheer 
seemed more slender and fragile than ever, but 
her firm lips, tightened and compressed by the bur- 
den of the day's work, relaxed in a smile, and the 
deep-set eyes, shadowed by the pain and trouble 
she had witnessed, brightened with a responsive 
twinkle. 

" Oh, Mrs. Hendrickson, you don't need me any 
more," she said. " You see I come to you now to 
get cheered up." 

" Sho' now ! You're laughin' at me," said Mrs. 
Hendrickson, with a jolly little giggle that shook 
her sides. *' I was feelln' terrible down-hearted 
this mornin'." 

" Why? Have you had a hard time to-day? " 
asked the Lady of Good Cheer. 

*' Oh, you don't know how terrible hard it is 
for me to be good," she said. " Every time I go j 
out In the yard, the neighbours call me names. 




fhoto by J. a. Uenison. 

A RAID IN HAMILTON STREET 



A MODERN MIRACLE 165 

They scream out, * You black Protestant ! ' * You 
old fake,' an' oh, I can't tell you all the vile lang- 
widges they use I It's somethin' fierce. They 
curse me and call me out o' me name because I 
won't drink with 'em no more, and it makes me 
that mad. My! I get crazy! I used to answer 
'em back, I could jaw worse than any o' them, but 
now I put up a prayer in me heart, * Lord, help 
me ! ' I says, and then I feel all quiet an' peaceful 
like, an' I come back in an' never say a word. 
They don't know what to think of me, I guess," 
she shook with a jolly little laugh. 

" How is Mr. Hendrickson? " asked the Lady 
of Good Cheer.. 

" Oh, he's drinkin' and gamblln', the same's 
ever. He stops in at the saloon in front and 
spends more'n half his money on the stuff. But 
when he comes in, I have the room all neat and 
clean, and a nice supper for him and I never says 
nothin' to him. At first he didn't know what to 
make of it, but now he brings in the beer, and tries 
to make me drink with him. He knows better, 
too. He was brought up on the Bible, and he 
knows a lot more'n I do. If he'd only try, he'd 
be a heap better'n me." 

" He will some day," answered the Lady of 
Good Cheer. " You know there's nothing aggra- 
vates a man so much as to find that his wife is 
always in the right. He can't make you do wrong 
now. He can't even make you get angry and call 



i66 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

him names. Pretty soon he'll understand that, 
and then you'll win out." 

" Yes, I know," she answered, " but it's so hard 
to wait. And he's terrible cranky when he's got 
the drink in him. Sometimes I'm scared o' me 
life to think of bein' alone with him! But I ain't 
alone. There's some one with me in me little 
room, close beside me here, just like you be. It 
gives me such a peace in me heart — you don't 
know!" 

The round heavy face was illumined now with 
a light that made the coarse features almost beauti- 
ful. It was strange enough and hard to explain, 
but there was something behind those uncouth, un- 
grammatical sentences, that took all the absurdity 
away from her words. No one could listen and 
not feel that she was describing something that 
was to her more real than all the hard, cruel facts 
of the wretched world that surrounded her. No 
one could look into that face, with its huge cheeks 
and double chins that seemed made only to wake 
laughter by its absurdities, without a sense that 
now she saw something that the rest of the world 
did not see. There in that miserable basement be- 
hind the saloon in the presence of an ignorant un- 
couth Irishwoman, the unseen world suddenly was 
made real. 

One Sunday some months before, a hideous sod- 
den mass of flesh, reeking with vile alcohol, with 
bruised face and swollen, swinish eyes, had stum- 



A MODERN MIRACLE 167 

bled into the church and sat down, lit was Mrs. 
Hendrickson. Something in the sermon had 
touched her. The Lady of Good Cheer found 
her weeping, and bending over the brutish face, 
with her delicate hand on the soiled, heavy shoul- 
der, she had spoken a few words of sympathy Into 
ears that none but she would have thought capable 
of hearing. And something hidden away beneath 
that coarse mask of flesh did hear and respond. 

Nearly every day since, she had called In the 
wretched basement room, and had seen It change 
gradually from filth and confusion to neatness and 
cleanliness. She had given her true self to this 
ignorant, degraded creature. She had shared with 
this darkened mind those deep convictions that 
made her what she was, never doubting but that 
in some way it would comprehend. It was not so 
much that she talked about religion and what It 
could do. There In the dark little basement she 
talked with Christ, her Master, an unseen Pres- 
ence, a power to her more efficient than the degen- 
erate heredity and depraved appetites that had 
mastered this wretched soul, and as she listened, 
the woman, simple and ignorant as she was, came 
to feel that Presence in as real a fashion as did the 
friend who spoke with Him. Her mind was that 
of a little child, and she received every truth sim- 
ply and without question. 

Mrs. Hendrickson told the Lady of Good 
Cheer the story of her life. She had been brought 



i68 BESIDE THE BOWERY . 

up in a wretched hut In Ireland. She laughed at 
her own Ignorance. 

*' Why, I was that Ignorant when I first come 
over, that I'd never seen a stove, and when they 
told me to build a fire, sure, I built It on top o' the 
stove ! " and she shook all over with silent 
laughter. 

But there were tragic parts to the story. She 
had come a simple-hearted child, but she soon be- 
gan to learn In this new land. She started to 
drink and curse and carouse. After she married 
Hendrlckson, things went from bad to worse. 
They were a strangely assorted pair. He was as 
tall and thin and morose as she was stout and jolly. 
He was a cooper of Scandinavian descent, who 
made good wages, but spent all his money on 
drink and gambling. She surpassed him, how- 
ever, when It came to drinking. All day long the 
beer can came and went In her room, until she was 
nothing but a sodden, brutish mass of flesh. Her 
first baby she killed by rolling over upon It in a 
drunken stupor. Her other child grew up to be 
a fair little girl with blue eyes and flowing, golden 
hair. She hated the beer can, and would plead 
with her mother and remonstrate when she saw It 
brought into the house. One day Mrs. Hendrlck- 
son had been drinking heavily. The little girl 
came in from school, and she sent her down for 
more beer. The child refused to go, and in 
drunken fury, her mother seized the little one by 



A MODERN MIRACLE 169 

her long hair and dragged her head-first down- 
stairs, unmindful of the child's screams of pain. 
The girFs spine was so injured, that when she died 
a few months later every one thought it a merciful 
deliverance. Such a life Mrs. Hendrickson had 
led, — a life of indescribable bestiality and wretch- 
edness. The change now was so incredible, that 
as the Lady of Good Cheer looked into her face, 
and saw the dull, heavy features lit up with a joy 
and peace that seemed to come from a vision of 
unseen things, she could hardly believe that this 
was in truth the same body that had once stag- 
gered sodden with alcohol into the church. 

One afternoon, some months later, the Lady of 
Good Cheer was busied in the church yard. Her 
occupation was not a conventional one, but this was 
not a conventional church yard. She was engaged 
in swinging from the " scups " some of the solemn 
German house-wives and dishevelled and jovial 
Irish mothers who had attended the meeting which 
she held every Tuesday afternoon. The church 
yard had been fitted up as a gymnasium for the 
children of the neighbourhood, and crowds of rag- 
ged and tattered little urchins clamoured daily at 
the gates for admission to the " Scupping School," 
as they called it. The Lady of Good Cheer had 
no idea of seeing the mothers neglected in these 
plans for the children. She had discovered that 
their enthusiasm for " scupping " was as great as 
that of their offspring, and she had insisted that 



170 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

when the swings were put up they should be made 
strong enough to sustain the weight of the stoutest 
matron of Cherry Hill. The stoutest matron was 
undoubtedly Mrs. Hendrickson, and the minister 
spent some anxious hours calculating her weight 
and designing a framework of sufficient strength 
to support the strain. His plan was to put a beam 
entirely across the narrow yard, setting one end 
in the wall of the church and the other in the wall 
of the opposite house, and to hang all the swings 
and trapezes from this. He sent the sexton down 
to the lumber yards and secured a beam a foot 
through and twenty-five feet long, and by the 
strenuous efforts of some ardent members of the 
Men's Club, it was at last put into position. 

The sexton looked up at it as it spanned the 
wide yard far aloft, and shook his head dubiously. 
" It's all right fer the kids," he said, '' but it'll 
never hold that there Mrs. Hendrickson; she'll 
make it crack fer sure." 

The next day the Building Inspector appeared. 
" What are you doing here? " he asked. 

The sexton explained, '' We're fixin' up one o' 
these here gymnasies," he said. " I'm tellln' 'em 
it's all right fer the kids, but there's some of these 
ladies can't let the scups alone. We've got one 
here who weighs about 400 pounds, a reg'lar 
Barnum prize lady, and I'm thinkin' it'll be a bad 
day fer the old church when she sets down on that 
there beam." 



A MODERN MIRACLE 171 

A grin spread slowly over the face of the in- 
spector. 

*' How much weight do yon reckon that beam 
will bear at the point over the middle of the 
yard? " he asked. 

" Oh, we was hopin' it would stand 500 pounds, 
but come to look at it, I'm afraid the old lady will 
make it crack if she sets down good and hard.'' 

The inspector pulled out his note book and 
pencil and figured a moment. " At its middle 
point that beam will bear a stress of 18,000 
pounds, so you've got a little margin even if the 
lady weighs 500. Good morning," he said and 
departed, leaving the sexton scratching his head. 

So the Lady of Good Cheer had no fear in giv- 
ing free rein to her mothers with the Scups and 
she was joining heartily in their fun when some 
one called her aside. In the waiting-room in the 
church basement she found Mrs. Hendrickson, 
bareheaded and panting. When she saw the Lady 
of Good Cheer she burst Into tears, gasping inco- 
herently between her sobs : " It's no use I I 
can't stand it no longer! I can't! I can't! 1 
can't!" 

"What is the matter?" asked the Lady of 
Good Cheer, putting a hand on her shoulder, and 
soothing her like a frightened child. 

" It's my man. He come in just now with a 
can o' beer. I had the house all tidied up and a 
nice supper ready, but he never so much as looked 



172 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

at it. He fills up two glasses from the can and 
says he : * Here, take yer glass and drink it down, 
an' no back talk or there'll be trouble. You've 
done the pious act long enough. I'm sick o' seein' 
you settin' there like a Chinese Image, pointin' the 
finger at me f er me sins. Come drink it down 1 ' 
* Why, John,' says I, * don't I keep the house up 
nice? You wouldn't like to go back an' live like 
pigs the way we used to?' *I don't care,' says 
he, ' pigs or no pigs, I'm boss In this house, an' 
when I say drink, you've gotter drink.' An' I 
says, ' John, you ain't got no call to be bossin' me. 
You know I'll eat and drink anythin' to please yer, 
even If 'twas mud, only I can't break me promise. 
'Tain't right to ax me.' ' Right ! ' he yells. ' I'll 
teach you what's right, so you won't forgit it 
neither ! ' an' he picks up a stick o' wood an' knocks 
me down an' beats me with it from head to foot. 
I'm black and blue all over. An' It don't seem as 
If I could stand it no longer ! " 

The Lady of Good Cheer felt herself almost 
blinded by the strong wave of wrath and pain that 
swept over her. She felt with this poor woman 
In every fibre of her soul. The struggle to do 
right and break from the habits of a life time was 
certainly hard enough without being beaten and 
cursed for it. It did not seem as if any one could 
hold out against such odds, and the Lady of Good 
Cheer felt lil^e crying out: "There Is no use In 
trying to get on with a man so brutally cruel. 



A MODERN MIRACLE 173 

You must leave him, before he drags you down 
with him." 

And then the blinding cloud passed, and she saw 
clearly again. 

" Oh, Mrs. Hendrickson," she said, " it is 
hard I I know just how hard it is I I feel it all 
just as if the blows had fallen on my own back. 
The hardest thing in the world to bear is when 
those whom you love and are trying to help turn 
on you and mock you and strike you and torture 
you. That is what our Lord bore. Every great 
man and true woman has helped to bear that cross, 
for that is the only way In which the world can be 
saved. Now you too are bearing It. You are 
not alone. They all know how It hurts. He, 
your Lord and Master, has felt every bit of what 
you feel to-night. It is hard, but it is worth while. 
He conquered, and you will conquer, and He is 
with you in it all." 

The tears passed and the broad simple face lit 
up with a sudden light: "Don't I know it! 
Why, this afternoon, I felt He was right there 
with me in the room I It was just like as if you 
was sittin' there with me on the sofa. An* me 
troubles didn't bother me no more, an' I was that 
quiet an' peaceful, — you don't know I " 

The Lady of Good Cheer saw her return to her 
dark basement with some misgiving. She had 
spoken bravely, but there were limits even to her 
faith, and some things seemed too hard to be ac- 



174 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

complished on earth. And yet in spite of her 
doubts, her prediction came true. 

It was about a year later that John Hendrick- 
son, after keeping sober for over six months, stood 
up before a large crowd that had gathered to wel- 
come him, and joined the church. He was a de- 
termined man, and when he once made up his 
mind, no one could shake him. The men who 
offered him drink at his work found this out to 
their cost. When he made a promise, he kept it. 
He had his faults, like most mortals, and some- 
times Mrs. Hendrickson would shake her head 
ponderously, and say with a profound sigh: 
" He's a terrible cranky man, John Hendrickson 
is." But when she said it she was sitting on a 
finely upholstered sofa in a nicely furnished three 
room apartment, full of pretty things, and all John 
Hendrickson's good weekly wage was safe in a 
vase on the mantel. 

Several years later there was a funeral at the 
church. The Cooper's Union was present in a 
body, and many others attended, so that the 
church was well filled. After the service a few 
words were spoken of a man who had kept his 
word and conquered himself, and had built for 
himself a new and happy life out of the ruins of 
the past. And every one of that crowd of his 
friends and fellow workmen bore witness to the 
fact that from the day he made it, John Hendrick- 
son kept his promise. 



XVIII 

A RING OF GOLD 

She was a strange figure of a woman as she stood 
just outside the door listening to the singing. 
Her clothes were ragged and dirty, and her grey 
hair was dishevelled. This in itself was not 
strange, for she stood in the hall of one of the 
wretched tenements in Cherry Street, and none 
of the women who had gathered there at the door 
were remarkable for the immaculateness of their 
garments or the perfection of their coiffure. Her 
face was the strange thing about her. It was a 
face that might have been taken by some process 
of legerdemain from behind the desk in some old- 
fashioned New England Country School house, 
and attached by magic to a body disguised in rags 
and dirt here in an environment absurdly in- 
congruous. She wore glasses, and her forehead 
was puckered with those lines of thought with 
which the illustrator supplies the old time " school 
marm." Her mouth had a prim little twist to it, 
and every wrinkle in the open, homely face sug- 
gested an immediate background of apple pie, 
doughnuts and cider. 

The Lady of Good Cheer had been holding a 
little service for a woman who lay desperately ill in 

^7S 



176 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

the room within, and the unwonted sound of the 
singing had drawn the neighbours to the open door. 
They had listened curiously as she spoke to the 
suffering woman beside her, and with more pleas- 
ure to the voices of the girls from the choir as 
they sang some of the old hymns. 

The Lady of Good Cheer started somewhat 
hurriedly to leave the room. It was a busy day, 
and she had many meetings before her. But as 
she came to the door her eye fell upon the listen- 
ing woman. The strange face. In the midst of 
ruddy, snub-nosed Celtic countenances and 
swarthy, wizened Italian faces at once drew her 
attention. She saw that the woman took a step 
forward as if to speak, and then sank back with 
a self-conscious flush. She noticed, too, that 
there were tears in her eyes and that her lips were 
trembling. The Lady of Good Cheer suddenly 
puzzled, stopped abruptly. Only one who had 
worked for years in Cherry Street could realise 
how strange a sight was such a face. If one could 
judge from the woman's garments, she might have 
been taken for one of those wretched creatures 
who spend their days In drunken brawls. Her 
soiled torn dress and the bruise on her cheek spoke 
plainly of her association with the commonplace 
scenes of the neighbourhood, but the face told 
another story. It was with the sense that she was 
approaching some unaccountable mystery that the 
Lady of Good Cheer reached out, took her hand 



A RING OF GOLD 177 

gently, and said: "What is it? Can I do any- 
thing for you? " 

" I know you're the Lady from the church," 
said the woman, and the Lady of Good Cheer 
was glad to note that the voice suited the face and 
not the garments. She could close her eyes and 
fancy herself standing in some New England 
farmhouse. 

" I've seen you lots of times," she went on, and 
hesitated. " Ye wouldn't think o' comin' up to 
my house some day, and singin' some of them 
hymns, would ye? My man likes to hear singin' 
and I might get him to stop in. Ye see, to tell 
the truth, we ain't neither of us been doin' just 
right, and I guess it's about time we turned over a 
new leaf. Why, say, when I heard that old 
hymn, it made me feel turrible. You wouldn't 
think it, but I used to be a decent woman. I had 
a good home up in New England, and it makes 
me ashamed now to look at a good woman like 
you. I guess if you knew the half of what I've 
been doin', ye'd take your hand away mighty 
quick." 

She left the room after receiving the promise 
of the Lady of Good Cheer to visit her, and one 
of the other women said, in a low voice, " That 
Mrs. Bronson's a terror I She and her husband 
fight somethin' fierce. They nearly tore the house 
down the other day. It's the drink. They live 
right over me, and yesterday, — well, say, I 



178 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

thought the roof would fall In on my head fer 
fair! Of all the poundin' and screamln' and 
swearinM They had the can goin' all day, and 
the two of 'em was too drunk to stand on their 
pins.'' 

A week later the meeting was held in Mrs. 
Bronson's house as she requested. It was one of 
the old three-story tenements, with dark halls and 
broken dilapidated stairs. The rooms were small, 
and the ceilings were so low as to endanger the 
head of a tall man. The plaster was cracked, and 
the wooden floors were worn and uneven. An 
excited gabbling in high pitched voices, and a 
strong odour of garlic and stale macaroni were 
advance agents to notify the visitor that the tene- 
ment was crowded with Italians. 

The Lady of Good Cheer climbed the rickety 
stairs to the garret room in front. The door was 
thrown open at her knock, and there stood Mrs. 
Bronson, her ragged dress covered with a clean 
white apron, her grey hair parted and smoothly 
brushed. Her spectacles were pushed up on her 
forehead. There was a smile of welcome on her 
prim mouth, and each separate wrinkle had a be- 
nevolent greeting of its own. 

" Well, now," she said, " I'm real glad to see 
you. Come right in ! " and then she added in a 
whisper, " He's here! I got him to stay! " 

Behind her loomed a tall, ungainly longshore- 
man in a blue-check jumper, his ragged trousers 



A RING OF GOLD 179 

held together by a rough leather belt in which was 
stuck one of the iron hooks used in unloading 
freight He had a rugged, weather-beaten face, 
a bristling moustache, pale blue eyes and a massive 
jaw. He had plastered down his sandy hair 
streaked with grey, evidently by a supreme 
effort. 

" He was scairt to stay, because all his clothes 
are pawned," she went on in a whisper, " but I 
told him if it was clothes ye were lookin' for, ye'd 
be goin' up to Altman's." 

Bronson came forward, and held out his great 
hand somewhat awkwardly, and with a self-con- 
scious smile. 

" Come right in! " said Mrs. Bronson, greeting 
the little company of singers that followed the 
Lady of Good Cheer. " You won't mind the 
house, will you? " she went on. " It looks terrible 
bare, but you see we pawned everything last week." 
A dull red flush crept over her cheek, and she 
continued hastily, " We've borrowed some chairs 
from the neighbours, and I guess it'll do." 

The room was bare indeed. There was noth- 
ing but a rough wooden table, a broken stove, and 
the borrowed chairs, but the place was clean for 
the first time in months, and the rough boards 
shone with hard scrubbing. 

It was a very simple little meeting that was held 
that day in the bare attic of the tenement crowded 
with curious Italians. They listened to a few of 



i8o BESIDE THE BOWERY 

those words from the ancient prophets that still 
vibrate with the intense consciousness of the vast 
Power that waits to lift up the fallen and give 
strength to the weak, a few of the sweet old 
hymns, and a request for help made very simply 
to One who was there in the room. That was 
all, save that the Lady of Good Cheer spoke very 
briefly about her deepest beliefs in a conversa- 
tional way, as if she were talking casually with 
them all. 

When the singers had gone, the Lady of Good 
Cheer remained behind. Mrs. Bronson had been 
deeply stirred by the meeting, and wished to tell 
her all the story of the past. It was a sad tale 
which she heard as she sat in the bare borrowed 
chair, her erect slender form leaning forward and 
her hands clasped about one knee, listening in 
sympathy to the woman whose homely spectacled 
face seemed so incongruous with the events she de- 
scribed. The woman had left her New England 
home with the promise of better work In New 
York, and had found herself deceived and at last 
turned adrift without a friend in the great city. 
She told of the desperate struggle for food, how 
work was offered by men who helped her, only to 
betray and then cast her off. She told of the 
shame that kept her from every appeal to friends 
at home. She told how she went down that ter- 
rible road of wretchedness and sin along which 
hunger forces many a girl to travel to-day. She 



A RING OF GOLD i8i 

drank to dull her conscience and to forget. Every 
day brought her lower, till she had no home but 
the streets, no refuge but the vilest of all spots 
on earth, the backroom of a Bowery saloon. One 
evening she swung open the screened side door, 
and crept in to sit down at one of the rough beer- 
splashed tables. Other women sat about her, 
women with dirty, plumed hats set rakishly on one 
side, with tattered, mud-clogged skirts, with fea- 
tures swollen and bloated and eyes bleared and wa- 
tery. Through the door in front they watched the 
crowd before the bar, a collection of beings from 
whom every human trace seemed almost effaced. 
She could see the beggars of Chatham Square, 
armless and legless, with hideous faked scars on 
arm and face. She could see tramps and hoboes, 
unshaved, unwashed, clothed in dirty rags, with 
vacuous eyes and hanging jaws and trembling 
hands. They would creep up to each new comer 
with a piteous, wheedling appeal, *' fer jest one 
more ball." She could see, too, a few well known 
yeggs and hold-up men with brutal apish features, 
thick necks and swollen deformed ears, their pock- 
ets bulging with black jacks and sandbags, who 
were waiting here until the hour when they would 
waylay some drunken sailor. She could hear their 
curses and vile stories through the open door. 
She was starving, as were the other dirty, plumed 
hags beside her, who with forced gaiety were 
waving their soiled, clawlike hands at the men 



i82 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

outside. Her life depended on the chance that 
some of those brutes would notice her. Her 
chances were slim, however, for she preserved a 
certain trim respectabihty, and shrank back from 
the bold hoydens about her. A tall fine looking 
longshoreman elbowed his way through the hoboes 
and loafers to the bar, and as he secured " the 
largest glass of beer for a nickel in New York " 
and carried it to the back room for safe consump- 
tion, his eye caught sight of her. He looked at 
her fixedly, and studied her from the top of her 
head to the soles of her feet, so closely that she 
flushed a little. Then he strode over and sat 
down beside her. " What are you doing in this 
dive?" he said: "This ain't no place for the 
likes of you. You come home with me. That'll 
be better for you than staying here." It was a 
new type of knight errantry, unfamiliar to Gala- 
had and his friends, but none the less real and 
true. From that hour he had been faithful to 
her, and she to him. They started housekeeping 
and would have fared well enough but for " the 
drink." When he brought his money home at the 
week's end, she sallied forth with the " can," and 
they kept it going until both were beyond the realm 
of sanity. Both were high tempered, and under 
the influence of alcohol they behaved like mad 
creatures. They scratched and tore and struck, 
and many a time a blow from his fist left her un- 
conscious. Then they had to begin the next week, 



A RING OF GOLD 183 

sore and wounded, with no food and no money 
and all their possessions pawned. 

It seemed like a strange, incredible dream to 
the Lady of Good Cheer as she listened. It was 
a tax upon her imagination to believe that this 
trim old New England " school marm," who sat 
beside her in spectacles and a white apron, should 
have been through scenes such as these. It seemed 
like a drama in which the actors were a misfit. 
But it was no play to them. The tears were run- 
ning down the woman's cheeks as she told the 
Lady of Good Cheer how tired they were of this 
wretched life. 

The man had listened in awkward silence, seated 
in one of the wooden chairs which seemed ab- 
surdly small to support his huge frame. He 
sought to hide his ragged trousers by cramping 
his unwieldy length of leg beneath him in ungainly 
fashion. His wife turned to him for confirma- 
tion. 

" Yes, me and her has had enough of this life," 
he said. ** We want to start in and do right. I'm 
goin' to marry her all reg'lar, and we're goin' to 
cut out the drink." 

There was a settled determination about this 
rugged man with his massive jaw that carried 
conviction. The face of the Lady of Good Cheer 
expressed her delight better than words. She as- 
sured them of her sympathy, and added : " Why 
don't you get married to-morrow? I'll get the 



i84 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

minister to come down, and you can start in at 



once." 



"No I" said the man emphatically, "my 
money's all gone. I haven't any decent clothes, 
and the furniture's all pawned. When we start, 
we want to start decent, anyhow." 

" But I can help you out," said the Lady of 
Good Cheer, " and the sooner you set wrong right, 
the better." 

" That may be some folks's way," said the man 
with bluff decision, " but when I do a thing, I 
mean to do it right, and I mean to do it 
myself. No offence to you, mum. When 
I marry her, I'm agoin' to have a decent 
home to bring her to, and decent clothes to be 
married in. If we've waited all these years, we 
can wait a few days more till I get my money and 
start right when we do start. I haven't got so 
much money now as would buy a plate o' beans, 
let alone a weddin' ring." 

" Oh, if it's the ring you want, I can get you 
a litde plated one quite cheap," said the Lady of 
Good Cheer, fearing to risk postponement of the 
good resolution. 

" No," he answered with a firm snap of his 
massive jaw. " If my wife is good enough for 
me to marry, she's good enough to have a ring of 
real gold. And I won't marry her till I can buy 
her as good a ring as any woman has got in this 
city." 



A RING OF GOLD 185 

The Lady of Good Cheer saw it was useless to 
push the matter, and she respected the man the 
more for his decision. He realised the greatness 
of the adventure upon which he was setting forth. 
Prayer was to him an untried field, but he was 
not ashamed to kneel with the Lady of Good 
Cheer before she left, and ask for help that his 
efforts might not be in vain. He felt that without 
aid it was beyond his power and that of the 
woman at his side to set right a life so wrongly 
begun, and to overcome the habits of years. He 
was not a religious man, and had not entered a 
church in years, but the Lady of Good Cheer had 
given him a conviction that there was a Power that 
would aid him in such an endeavour honestly made. 
" Help me and her to start right, this time," he 
said. " Help us to cut out the drink. We want 
to be on the square. We want to do right. Help 
us, for Christ's sake." 

It was not many weeks before the Lady of 
Good Cheer brought the minister down to Bron- 
son's rooms in the Cherry Street tenement. She 
would never have known them if she had not had 
a hand herself In their transformation. Neat new 
furniture, a bright rug, a gay sofa and a hundred 
little touches here and there had transformed the 
bare garret Into as attractive a little nest as could 
be found In the ward. 

They stood side by side, these two who had 
come up out of the depths together. The tall 



i86 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

longshoreman, clothed now in garments that he 
thought worthy of the occasion, took the worn 
hand of the grey-haired woman whom he wished 
to honour to the utmost of his ability. She stood 
there clad in the neat grey dress upon which she 
had toiled all the week, and there was a flush of 
pride on her wrinkled cheek as she looked up at 
the man whose simple, reverent love was raising 
her up out of degradation and shame, and bestow- 
ing upon her the greatest gift that woman can re- 
ceive. Stumblingly but firmly he repeated the old 
familiar words, which each man takes upon his 
lips as he receives the woman who is to preside 
over his home and to whom he entrusts his life 
and honour, words repeated often at some gor- 
geous pageant by youthful lips that understand 
but little the meaning of that great promise that 
binds two souls together, but never spoken with 
deeper understanding or truer meaning than here 
in the tenement attic by the stumbling lips of the 
rough longshoreman to the worn grey-haired lit- 
tle woman at his side. 

" I, James, take thee Ellen, to be my wedded 
wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, 
for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in 
sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till 
death us do part.'* 

He fumbled a moment in his pocket, and then 
slipped a ring on the worn finger, and bending 
with a sort of rough reverence toward the grey 



A RING OF GOLD 187 

little woman at his side he repeated with a spedal 
emphasis the words: "With this ring I thee 
wed,'' and the solemn adjuration with which the 
sentence closes. When the prayer was ended, he 
breathed a long sigh. 

" Well, we're started on the square now at last, 
and we mean business," he said to the Lady of 
Good Cheer, as she came up to shake his hand. 
** I reckon that ring'll hold us two together as long 
as there's anythin' left of us, for it's real gold." 



XIX 

A PRACTICAL JOKE 

The Lady of Good Cheer was climbing with some 
difficulty the narrow stair that led to the attic of an 
ancient dwelling-house in Hamilton Street. Once 
it had belonged to the aristocracy, and the dark 
stair up which she was feeling her way had led 
to the servants' quarters. But now the ancient 
glory was departed. The whole house was falling 
to pieces, and reeked with the odour of rats and 
cats and dirty rags and stale beer. It seemed as 
if the old walls of this respectable family mansion 
must shudder with horror over the sights and 
sounds and odours which were its daily experience. 
Now each room of this whole top floor accommo- 
dated an entire household. At the top of the 
stairs there was a dark attic hall. The Lady of 
Good Cheer groped her way to one of the doors 
and knocked. A husky bass voice from within 
called, " Come in," and she opened the door and 
looked in upon a wretched little furnished room. 
The floor was bare, and there was a bed whose 
dirty covers lay as they had been thrown In the 
morning, and a deal table with a few dirty dishes, 
and a large can of beer, half of which had been 
spilled and was trickling over the greasy boards. 

i88 



A PRACTICAL JOKE 189 

Out of one of the rickety chairs, there rose a 
tall cumbrous form, which, except for the soiled 
black skirt that hung about it, had little in its out- 
line to suggest a woman. The red,' hairy arm that 
she stretched out toward the Lady of Good Cheer 
was bare, for the sleeves of the dirty white jacket 
that covered her slouchy masculine shoulders were 
rolled up, and her blouse was unbuttoned, show- 
ing the thick rough neck. The Lady of Good 
Cheer shrank back instinctively from the coarse 
face blotched with red and disfigured with a beard 
of curling brown hairs, but a heavy hand grasped 
her slender fingers and drew her forward. 
" Come in I Come in! " It was the same rau- 
cous voice she had heard before, even less at- 
tractive now that she saw the large mouth from 
which it emanated with the thick lips parted in an 
affectionate grin that revealed several broken and 
missing teeth. The woman clung to the hand of 
the Lady of Good Cheer, fondling it as she pulled 
her toward a seat. 

" Sit down here, beside me ! " she said with a 
leer in her pale blue eyes, half closed beneath their 
bushy brows. " I'm so glad to have a lady come 
in that I can talk to as a friend," she went on, 
while the Lady of Good Cheer watched with help- 
less fascination the movement of the thick mous- 
tached lips, as they opened and closed and smiled 
in maudlin good will beneath the swollen, hooked 
nose. 



190 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

Then with a sudden movement the Lady of 
Good Cheer freed herself from the grasp of the 
large hand, and said hurriedly: " I came to see 
if you would let me send Jennie to the country 
next week." 

The woman looked over to the dark corner 
where a pathetic ragged little figure was huddled, 
playing with some dirty bits of cloth. 

" Jennie, come here! " she called in her rough 
bass voice. 

The child rose hastily and came towards her. 
**Yes'm," she said. 

She had a thin body and a pale little face with 
a large mouth which was trembling now as she 
looked at her mother with frightened eyes. 

" Jennie, you don't want to go to the country, 
do you? " she asked sternly. " You'd rather stay 
with your mother, and not go away with all those 
strangers, wouldn't you? " 

** Yes'm," said the frightened child. 

" You see," said the woman, " I can't get her 
to leave me. She loves her mother so, she don't 
want to be out of my sight. And then, I need 
her too about the house." 

*' I wish you would let her go," said the Lady 
of Good Cheer. " She doesn't look strong, and 
two weeks in the country would make a new girl 
of her." 

The child watched her with pathetic eagerness, 
but the mother answered. " No, I don't want to 



A PRACTICAL JOKE 191 

send my child off with all those rough good-for- 
nothing Irish children. Tm poor, and I've seen 
hard times, but I belong to one of the best fam- 
ilies in Boston. You know the Blanks, don't you, 
who have that big house on Commonwealth Ave- 
nue?" 

The Lady of Good Cheer admitted that she 
knew them well by name. 

" Well, Governor Blank is my first cousin. 
You wouldn't think it to look at this room, but I 
was brought up with the best people in Boston. 
I've had a lot of trouble, and my husband is an 
ignorant man. He has no education, and he can't 
sympathise with me or understand me at all. 
That's why I'm so glad to have some one come 
in that I can talk to about the old days." 

But the Lady of Good Cheer had no desire to 
continue the conversation and rose abruptly. 

" I'm sorry, but I must go," she said. " I have 
twenty calls to make this afternoon." 

She tore herself from the grasp of Mrs. Stubbs, 
and shuddered as she groped her way down the 
stairs. She was conscious of a strong desire to 
wash her hands and disinfect her brain cells. At 
the door she met Mr. Stubbs, whose work was 
slack just then, and who was returning unusually 
early. His ragged, ill-fitting garments gave him 
a dejected look, as he stood with hanging head 
to let her pass. And yet he was a fine figure of 
a man, well-built and tall, with regular features. 



192 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

a smooth clear cheek, and a forehead that was high 
and strong, though surmounted by tousled black 
hair and a broken hat. There was a pathetic look 
in his brown eyes, that made him look like a big 
mastiff who has an unsympathetic master. 

" Good morning, Mr. Stubbs," said the Lady 
of Good Cheer. " I have just been up to ask 
Mrs. Stubbs to let Jennie go to the country, but 
she does not think she can spare her. I wish you 
would let her go. She needs the country air." 

Mr. Stubbs made no response, but shook his 
head dubiously. 

" Won't you persuade Mrs. Stubbs to let her 
go? " she asked. 

" rd like her to go first rate," he said, " but 
if she says no, there's an end on't," and he went on 
up stairs with a weary drag to his ill-shod feet, 
leaving behind him an odour of stale beer and an- 
cient rags. He was a teamster and made good 
wages, but whatever financial securities he ac- 
quired were at once liquidated by Mrs. Stubbs, 
who kept him saturated with " the drink." Little 
Jennie was essential in the scheme of things as a 
means of transport between the corner saloon and 
the attic room, and her small legs were kept in 
constant motion over the familiar route. She 
could not be spared to go to the country. She 
was allowed no outings or amusements. 

Once, some months later, the Lady of Good 
Cheer met Jennie playing with a rough crowd of 



A PRACTICAL JOKE 193 

children in Cherry Street, but even then the inevi- 
table can was in her hand, and she was evidently- 
stealing a few moments of play en route. The 
children were playing in front of a house where 
a little girl had just died, and over their heads as 
they shouted and laughed hung the pathetic white 
rosette, soiled and tattered, that told of one more 
little life crushed out by the insidious, destroying 
forces of the great city. 

It may have been in part the effect of that sym- 
bol, but it seemed to the Lady of Good Cheer that 
little Jennie had suffered a horrifying change. 
The small face that had been so thin and pathetic 
seemed swollen and red with many blotches. Her 
large mouth had grown coarse and her lips thick. 
Her manner was no longer shy, but bold and 
rough. The Lady of Good Cheer feared that 
here were the signs of a death far more terrible 
than that symbolised by the white bow beneath 
which the child was playing, and determined to 
make another effort to get her out of the clutches 
of Mrs. Stubbs. Mr. Stubbs had joined the Men's 
Club. The Lady of Good Cheer had persuaded 
him to take the pledge, and for some time he kept 
sober. His chronic environing atmosphere of 
stale alcohol seemed to have been dissipated. 
Mrs. Stubbs had also renounced her beer with 
many solemn protestations and the Lady of Good 
Cheer in return had enabled them to move from 
furnished rooms into an apartment of their own. 



194 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

But the Lady of Good Cheer had little confidence 
In the virtuous protestations of Mrs. Stubbs, and 
she was convinced that she was using all her influ- 
ence In an underhand way to drag down her hus- 
band and child. She always felt an instinctive 
dread of an encounter with Mrs. Stubbs, and it 
was not until her conscience urged It that she real- 
ised that a call could no longer be postponed. Ac- 
cordingly one day she entered the narrow court, 
and ascended the stairs of the rear house in which 
Mrs. Stubbs' new apartment was located. As she 
entered the little room, she was at once aware of 
an atmosphere unduly alcoholic, and the over- 
whelmingly affectionate greeting of Mrs. Stubbs 
strengthened the impression that Mrs. Stubbs was 
up to some villainy. The woman clung to her 
hand with a maudlin grin, and the Lady of Good 
Cheer had an irresistible desire to screen herself 
from the leer of her pale blue eyes, beneath their 
bushy brows, as from something unclean and pol- 
luting. 

Mrs. Stubbs was in an affectionate and confiden- 
tial mood. She spoke of her proud family connec- 
tions, and of the troubles and Injustice of human 
life. 

" I oughtn't to be living like this," she said. 
" I'm an educated woman, and a woman of- good 
family. I'd never have ought to take up with a 
man like Mr. Stubbs." She paused a moment and 
then leaned forward with a wink of her pale blue 



A PRACTICAL JOKE 195 

eyes. ^* I'll tell you something. You think I'm 
married to Mr. Stubbs, but I ain't. I wouldn't 
marry an ignorant good-for-nothing man like that. 
I can leave him any time I want to.'* 

The Lady of Good Cheer felt a wave of disgust 
run through her, but she mastered It. 

" I'm very sorry to hear that," she said. '' If 
you aren't married to him, you ought to leave him 
at once." 

" Oh, no ! " she answered, with another wink. 
^' Not just now. He brings In too good pay. But 
some day, I will. I'm not a-going to spend my 
whole life with a man like that." 

The Lady of Good Cheer left with an over- 
mastering sense of disgust and horror, and it was 
not diminished when she met Mr. Stubbs walking 
with erratic steps and with a vacant expression In 
his brown eyes. 

" Come In to the church house a minute,'* she 
said, " I want to speak with you." 

Mr. Stubbs shambled Into the waiting room and 
dropped loosely Into a seat. 

" I'm afraid things are not going very well at 
your house," she began. 

Ordinarily It was like drawing crocodile's teeth 
to extract a word from Mr. Stubbs, but to-day un- 
der alcoholic pressure, the safety valve was opened 
and all the imprisoned bitterness of months came 
pouring forth. 

" It's something fierce ! " he said. *' I don't 



196 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

know what to do with that woman. She drives 
me crazy." 

The Lady of Good Cheer felt much sympathy 
with the man. His silent, uncomplaining loyalty 
to the woman he had chosen, and his hard toil on 
her behalf, indicated something of nobility In the 
man. She felt that Mrs. Stubbs was deceiving 
him and exploiting his hard labour, and that her 
degrading influence was dragging him down 
to lower and lower depths. There was no hope 
for him while this woman kept him In her clutches. 
If he were free from her, he might prosper and 
the fine qualities in him so long suppressed, might 
enable him to develop Into a really useful man. 

" She told me you were not married to her. 
Why don't you leave her and start in for your- 
self?" 

Mr. Stubbs looked at her with a slow surprise 
In his sad brown eyes. 

"Leave her?" he repeated. For a moment 
his face lit up. Then he shook his head. " No," 
he said, " there's the little girl. We've got to 
stick together for the little girl's sake. She's all 
I've got, and I couldn't have no harm come to 
her." 

The Lady of Good Cheer offered to provide for 
the child. She brought every possible argument 
to bear, but he only shook his head slowly. 

" No," he said, " I've lived with her these 
ten or twelve years, an' I ain't a goin' to run off 



A PRACTICAL JOKE 197 

and leave her. It would make trouble for the lit- 
tle girl." 

" For the little girl's sake then, you must keep 
straight and stop drinking. If you don't, there 
will be no one to look out for her." 

" I know," he said, " but, my God! what can I 
do? You don't know that woman! It don't 
seem as if I could keep from the drink when she's 
around ! " 

The Lady of Good Cheer did her best to make 
him feel her sympathy and respect. Indeed, in 
this ignorant workingman, she seemed to recognise 
a higher sense of honour, and a more heroic 
standard than that of the world's chivalry. Be- 
cause a woman had once surrendered herself to 
him, he felt himself bound to give her his whole 
life and all that he could earn, even though she 
had become hideous to him and he knew that she 
abused his devotion and despised him for his loy- 
alty. 

The Lady of Good Cheer was so anxious about 
little Jennie that she made another effort to see 
Mrs. Stubbs. She found that lady even more af- 
fectionate and confiding than on her previous visit. 
She made an earnest plea that the child should be 
allowed to go away to the country, and Mrs. 
Stubbs seemed inclined to relent. 

" I'll tell you a secret about that child, only 
you must promise never to tell," she said with a 
leer. " Mr. Stubbs thinks the world o' that child. 



198 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

and he sticks by the home just for her sake. He 
thinks she's his child " — and she leaned forward 
till the coarse lips and hairy chin were close to her 
listener and winked with her pale blue eyes — '' but 
she ain't!" she concluded with a hoarse laugh. 
" That's one on him ! I've fooled him all these 
years ! Ain't that a great joke? " 



XX 

A BATTLE WITH DEMONS 

" Why don't you go in next door and help them 
two little girls? " said Mrs. O'Brien to the Lady 
of Good Cheer one day when she was calling in 
the tallest and narrowest and dirtiest of the tene- 
ments in the " Long Block." " Their mother's 
dead, an' their father's a howly terror I Sure, 
I'm that flustrated wid his rowin' and jawin' next 
door that I've got palpytashuns in me chist an' cole 
shivers In me backbone. He near kilt the two 
of 'em this afternoon. I heard an awful screech, 
and run In thinkin' the kid had threw a fit or some- 
thin', an' up jumps that man wid a knife as long 
as an umbrell ! An' says he, * What are ye doin', 
buttin' In here I Git out o' me house, an' quick 
too,' says he, * or ye'll be ridin' over to Brooklyn 
In a hearse wid yer skin so full o' holes your own 
grandmither won't know yer.' I let out a yell: 
* Howly Mither 1 Save us I ' says I, and run for 
me life. I'd no more leave that man to take care 
o' two girls, than I'd leave a wild Indian to nurse 
me baby wid a scalpin' knife. It ain't respecta- 
ble I" 

The Lady of Good Cheer knocked at the next 
door and it was opened by a slim, wiry girl of 

199 



20O BESIDE THE BOWERY 

seventeen. Her freckled face showed evidence of 
close contact with the world's coarse thumb in the 
hard lines about her mouth, and in the suspicion 
and defiance that filled her eyes, as though some 
bitter experience of human nature were written 
forever in them. 

*' What do you want?" she demanded, ab- 
ruptly. 

The Lady of Good Cheer explained her posi- 
tion, and told the girl she knew of their trouble 
and would be glad to help if she could. 

Her defiant manner gave way at once. " Come 
in,'' she said. " Oh, I don't know what to do ! 
Me father's clean out of his head! I don't care 
for myself, but he shan't hurt Nellie," and a tiger- 
ish glint came into her eyes that told the Lady of 
Good Cheer that the child would not suffer so long 
as her sister had nails and teeth. 

The rooms were clean and in good order, and 
furnished with many of those little knick-knacks 
that are the record of a family life, and often link 
a wretched present with happy associations of the 
past. By the window stood a little girl of about 
eight years with a face of such unusual loveliness 
that the Lady of Good Cheer looked at her in 
surprise. Her features were regular, save for a 
slight saucy tilt to the nose. She had the large 
liquid blue eyes, and those red full lips chiseled in 
the form of Cupid's bow, which are seldom found, 
save in the imagination of a pre-Raphaelite. A 



A BATTLE WITH DEMONS 201 

mass of dark hair, with a glint of gold In it when it 
caught the light, fell over her shoulders and curled 
round her delicate cheek. Just now the corners 
of her mouth drooped pathetically and there were 
tears In her eyes. 

^' Tell me all about It," said the Lady of Good 
Cheer. 

The girl's eyes filled with angry tears as she 
described a battle fought between maddened brute 
strength and clinging childish devotion for the pos- 
session of a mother's watch, the sole memorial 
and keepsake left to these motherless girls to re- 
call a vanished love and care. The father had 
seized all the money Jessie had saved to pay the 
rent, and had come home more crazed with drink 
than before to demand this one article which the 
girls prized above all else. Indignantly Jessie 
had refused to give It up to be pawned, and the 
infuriated man had rushed at her with curses, and 
struck her. She was not to be cowed by words or 
even by blows, and she had defended her sacred 
relic desperately, until In an outburst of rage the. 
madman threw her to the ground, and, catching up 
a carving knife from the table, thrust It at her 
throat. Then she yielded, but It was with tears 
of anger rather than fear. It would not take him 
long to spend the money he received from the 
pawnbroker. She was expecting him to return at 
any moment to demand some of Nellie's trinkets 
or some of the household belongings. 



202 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

" An' I've worked so hard to keep the house 
together," said the girl with the hot tears still in 
her eyes. " An' If he goes on like this, there 
won't be a thing left In a day or two! An' me 
and Nellie haven't had a thing to eat all day! " 
she added. 

" It's my birthday, too ! " chimed in Nellie. 
Her long-lashed eyes filled again with tears, and 
her delicate red lips quivered. " I'm eight to-day 
and I thought he'd bring me such a nice present ! 
He said he'd give me a fine time on my birthday, 
an' I've been crying all day." 

The story was sad enough, indeed, but the Lady 
of Good Cheer saw In It an even tragic significance. 
The situation was acutely dangerous. Aside 
from the risk that the man In his crazed condition 
might seriously injure one of these defenceless 
children, there was the probability that he would 
carry out the threat he had made to Jessie to 
bring home with him some of his drunken com- 
panions and carouse with them all night, leaving 
the two girls at the mercy of a roomful of intoxi- 
cated men. The Lady of Good Cheer briefly 
considered the matter, then she went out swiftly, 
promising to return In a moment. First she sent 
a message to the church for reinforcements. 
Then she bought some food, which included a 
birthday cake for Nellie. 

Nellie's eyes glowed at sight of the cake and 
when the candles were lighted, her joy knew no 



A BATTLE WITH DEMONS 203 

bounds. They were In the midst of a jolly little 
birthday party, when they heard a heavy stumbling 
step on the stair. "He's coming!" cried the 
girls. For the Lady of Good Cheer the situation 
was a dangerous one. No one had come to her 
aid. To face alone a man who was so mad with 
drink that he had tried to kill his own children Is 
hardly a pleasant task, and this man was a des- 
perate character, who in his present mood would 
not hesitate a moment to strike a woman or knock 
her down. Yet retreat never entered her mind. 
If her heart beat more rapidly as she waited to 
see what sort of a creature it was with which she 
had to deal, no one could have detected It. 

In a moment the door was thrown violently 
open, and a huge man entered with the lurching, 
swinging stride of a sailor. He had been fighting, 
his coat was torn, a heavy blow on the cheek bone 
had caused a swelling that made his eyes seem 
narrower and more piglike than ever, and his 
drooping, sandy moustache had a stain of blood 
upon It. He was from the North of Ireland, and 
his origin was evident In his speech, thickened 
though It was by drink. 

" GI' me s' money, Jessie," he shouted, " gotter 
have s* money! " 

" I haven't got none," said Jessie sullenly. 

" Yes, ye have, too ! don't give me no back talk I 
I know yer tricks ! " and he advanced upon her 
with doubled fist. 



204 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

The Lady of Good Cheer rose and stepped for- 
ward with a swift movement that brought her 
between the enraged man and his daughter. 

" Good evening, Mr. Sanderson," she said. 

He had been so absorbed in his quest for the 
money that he had paid no attention to her. Now 
he turned upon her with surprise and wrath. The 
veins on his forehead thickened. With that sul- 
len scowl on his face he was as ugly a beast as ever 
assumed a human shape, and many a strong man 
would have thought twice before pursuing the con- 
versation. 

" What're ye doin' here?" he shouted. 
'' Teachin' my girls to disobey their father. I'll 
teach you to butt in." 

He gave a quick lurch toward her. His move- 
ments had the uncertain and violent suddenness of 
a man maddened by alcohol. In another moment 
he would have struck her down, as he had just 
knocked down two men who barred his way in the 
saloon. She faced him, tall and slender, with 
head erect. Her aquiline nostrils quivered a little, 
and her firm lips tightened slightly, but from be- 
neath her high brow her deep, steady eyes, un- 
flinching and calm, looked him full in the face. 

" Mr. Sanderson," she said quietly, " I know 
you are a gentleman, and that you would never do 
anything discourteous to a lady." 

With those eyes upon him, the drunken brute 
faltered. His hands sunk to his side. A foolish 



A BATTLE WITH DEMONS 205 

smile, half of embarrassment, half of conceit, came 
over his face. "A gentleman? Yes, sure I'm a 
gentleman I '' he said. He gave his shoulders a 
sudden hunch, as if his coat were too tight for 
them, and expanded his chest in imitation of the 
person of quality he was supposed to resemble. 
Then he let out a cracked and maudlin laugh, that 
sounded like the crow of a hoarse rooster. 

The girls looked on, amazed that he had not 
struck down their visitor. He could hardly ac- 
count for it himself. When he rushed at any one 
with his huge fist poised, he was accustomed to see 
either fear or rage in his victim's eyes, and then 
it was easy to strike. But in these eyes there was 
no trace of fear nor rage, nor yet that more mad- 
dening expression of disgust and. contempt. They 
were challenging him on a point of honour, as if 
they refused to accept him at his face value. 
They seemed to question and probe, but not to 
laugh at him. There was almost a reverence in 
them. He felt she had found in him something 
that deserved respect, and it pleased him. He 
paid little attention to her words, but the sympa- 
thy in her voice arrested him. She was not fault- 
finding, as other women were. Vague images out 
of the past rose before his bleared eyes : the image 
of a white-haired woman by the fireside, whose 
hands were stretched out to bless him, the vision 
of a fair-faced bride who long ago had trusted him 
and believed him true. The Lady of Good Cheer 



2o6 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

talked on of his home, and of little Nellie, and of 
her disappointment that her birthday had been 
forgotten. 

" Poor little Nellie! " said Sanderson, maudlin 
tears coming into his eyes. *' Shure, 'tis a shame ! 
It's a bad day she's had for sure ! Never mind, 
dearie, your dad'll give you a fine present some 
day! But I'm too poor now. I'm out o' work. 
What can a man do? Dear! dear! it's terrible! " 
and he gave a long sigh. 

" You see we have a birthday cake, anyway," 
said the Lady of Good Cheer. " Isn't that nice? 
Sit down and join the party." 

" No," said Sanderson, " I must go." 

A sudden fierceness came into his face, and he 
turned to Jessie. "Now give me that money! 
I've got to have it! I won't stand no foolin' ! " 

He lifted his huge fist again. For the moment 
he was out of the range of the glance by which 
the Lady of Good Cheer had held him. 

" Mr. Sanderson! " she called. 

Her voice, though quiet, was so firm and au- 
thoritative that Sanderson turned, expecting a 
tirade and preparing to face it with a burst of 
rage. But instead of a scolding he met a glance 
of grateful confidence that seemed to thank him 
for his quick understanding and prompt response. 
She seemed so sure that no further word could 
possibly be necessary, that he gave a gasp of 
astonishment. Before he could speak she was in- 



A BATTLE WITH DEMONS 207 

quiring in a tone of great sympathy how he had 
come to lose his position as pressman, and to meet 
with such hard luck. There is nothing a drunken 
man loves more than to dilate on his misfortunes, 
and Sanderson, willing to be beguiled, sank down 
on the sofa. 

''Hard luck! Yes! Ah me! Ochone! Yes! 
I've had nothin' but hard luck. I believe the divil 
is afther me ! " His eyes, half bleared with 
drink, seemed to catch a strange glint of terror. 

" Did ye ever see the divil, now? " he asked in 
a thick whisper. " I did; or somethin' like him." 

" Tell me about it," said the Lady of Good 
Cheer, thankful to have led his mind away from 
drink, even though it was to the devil. 

" It was a few months ago. We was livin' in 
Catherine Street in some rooms we got cheap be- 
cause a dago got murdered there, and they said 
the rooms was haunted. An' one night we'd been 
having a bit of a jolly time, an' I went into me 
room and laid down on me bed. Pretty soon the 
lights began to go out, an' I thinks, ' That's 
funny ! ' but I stays on me bed. An' it gets darker 
an' darker, an' by an' by I sees the door openin' 
slow an' still like." His voice sunk to a thick 
whisper. 

" An' through the door come a man, the biggest 
man I ever see, big an' black, he was. An' he 
comes nearer an' nearer, an' shure he had no head 
at all, at all I An' I tried to yell, an' I couldn't 



2o8 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

open me head, an' I tried to jump up an' I couldn't 
move so much as me finger. An' the cole sweat 
was pourln' off me in streams! On he come, an' 
I sees he had his head in his hands, — all drippin' 
blood, it was. An' he comes right up to me, — 
shakin' like a leaf I was, — an puts the head right 
down on me chist! An' wid that I gives out a 
yell like a fire engine, an' jumps off the bed and 
runs clean through the house an' out into the 
street! An' when we went back the man was 
gone. I moved out o' the house pretty quick, but 
the bad luck follers me. Ah me ! Ochone ! the 
divil is after me ! Shure that's the trouble ! " 

" Is it? " she asked, with a smile. " I'm afraid 
the trouble is that you don't really want to get 
away." 

He sprawled with his huge length over the sofa, 
and she began to speak seriously and sympatheti- 
cally of the life he had been living. She told him 
plainly what she thought of his behaviour, and he 
sat quietly and listened, although he would have 
knocked a man down for saying half as much. 
For he felt that, though she rebuked him, it was 
because she had found something in him she re- 
spected and trusted, and he recognised that she 
had a right to speak as she did. It was the same 
right which he had acknowledged in those who 
years ago had believed in him — the claim which 
faith and love always have over a man's life. 
The battle was won long before help came, and 



A BATTLE WITH DEMONS 209 

the girls were safe that night from terrors worse 
than death. On her way uptown the Lady of 
Good Cheer ended her account of the evening by 
saying: " I don't care what you say! I like Mr. 
Sanderson. There's something that's really worth 
while at the bottom of that man." 



XXI 

A STRANGE DISCIPLINARIAN 

" Say, won't ye come over to my house and see me 
mommer?" said little Annie, slipping her hand 
into that of the Lady of Good Cheer, as they came 
out of the mission in Rutgers Street together. 
Annie was a mystery which the Lady of Good 
Cheer had never solved. She had a bright, elfish 
face, and shining, dark eyes, and a tangle of brown 
hair. She was eight years old, but very small and 
delicate in every outline. Her dress was in rags, 
she was barefoot, and her thin face was white and 
pinched, but she was not in the least the ordinary 
street urchin. She had a quick intelligence and an 
affectionate disposition which made her a favourite 
with her teachers in school, but she had also a 
strange atmosphere of another and totally differ- 
ent life, much as the odour of violets might cling 
to a broken bottle in an ash heap. She seemed to 
the Lady of Good Cheer like an elfin changeling, 
a quaint little fairy princess that some old witch 
had dropped into the most wretched poverty- 
stricken block in the swarming tenement district. 

The Lady of Good Cheer had never been able 
to learn where she lived, or anything about her 
parents, and she was therefore surprised and de- 

2IO 



A STRANGE DISCIPLINARIAN 211 

lighted at this informal invitation. Annie had 
dropped in at a children's meeting held in a mis- 
sion which had recently been started in the block, 
and she and the Lady of Good Cheer had soon 
become good friends. When general topics of 
conversation were introduced, she was a great 
chatterbox, but if any question led up to the sub- 
ject of her parents or her home, she would become 
suddenly silent, and stand with shyly drooping 
head until the danger was past. To-day, how- 
ever, for some reason she had broken the taboo. 
Her elder sister looked down at her with astonish- 
ment and rebuke in her face and apparently started 
to check her, but shyness was too strong in her, 
and she only flushed deeply and shifted from one 
bare foot to another as she patted the baby in her 
arms, who had opened his mouth in preparation 
for a good howl. He was an enormous baby with 
a grimy red face protruding from the wrappings 
of a dirty grey shawl, and it took all Gertrude's 
slight strength with the assistance of occasional 
desperate hitches to keep the huge animated bun- 
dle from wriggling to the ground. Gertrude was 
a beautiful child, as much advanced in her physical 
development as Annie was backward. Though 
but twelve years old her form already showed the 
rounded outlines of a perfect maidenhood. She 
had deep violet eyes and long lashes, and she sur- 
veyed the Lady of Good Cheer dubiously. A soft 
flush played on her rounded cheek, delicate as a 



212 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

rose leaf, and her red lips were parted In a doubt- 
ful smile that showed her pretty white teeth. As 
the Lady of Good Cheer looked at her and noticed 
the ragged, dirty dress and soiled hands, the streak 
of smut across the piquant little nose, she felt more 
than ever the strange mystery that surrounded 
these children, so evidently of good parentage and 
quick intelligence, and kept them In such conditions 
of poverty and filth. 

Annie clung to her hand and danced gaily at 
her side, and Gertrude followed with reluctant 
steps, carrying her heavy burden, and the Lady of 
Good Cheer crossed the street and entered an an- 
cient dilapidated tenement that seemed on the 
verge of dissolution. Up the broken wooden steps 
they went, and Annie burst open a door in the 
rear, and flew in like a whirlwind. 

"Mommer!" she cried. *' Here's the lady 
from the mission come to see you ! " The woman 
who rose from an uncertain rocking chair to meet 
her was one who would have drawn the attention 
of the Lady of Good Cheer anywhere. She was 
well formed, and there was a certain dignity 
about her person. Her cheeks were fair and 
smooth, and her regular features and her rosy 
complexion gave her a surprisingly youthful air. 
Her pale yellow hair had been fastened In a knot, 
but most of It had escaped and hung about her 
forehead and neck In stray locks. Her ragged 
dress was open at the throat, and was so soiled 



A STRANGE DISCIPLINARIAN 213 

that its original hue would have been hard to de- 
termine. Her feet were bare, for it was a hot 
summer's day. 

" I'm glad to see you," she said. ** Come right 
in and sit down." 

Her red lips, parting in a smile of welcome, dis- 
closed a missing tooth or two. But none of these 
superficial deficiencies seemed to embarrass her in 
the least. She might have been a hostess in full 
dress welcoming her guests to a Fifth Avenue 
mansion. 

The room was in hopeless confusion. Although 
the greasy debris of the last meal had not been 
cleaned away, the table was half set for a new 
meal with plates and knives and forks which had 
apparently had no close contact with the dishpan 
since the last occasion of their usefulness. An old 
dirty comforter lay in one corner, and each chair 
was occupied by ragged garments or by voluminous 
wrappings, apparently discarded by the baby when 
hopelessly soiled and awaiting some laundry day in 
the uncertain future. In the midst sat a large pan 
of beans prepared for the evening repast. 

The Lady of Good Cheer made the necessary 
remarks in the way of salutation, but the more she 
looked about, the more she was impressed by the 
amazing incongruity of the scene. How had this 
woman and these children, so evidently belonging 
to a different sphere in life, sunk to this level of 
wretchedness and degradation? Certainly there 



214 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

was a mystery here. What could the father and 
husband of this family be like? A hopeless 
drunkard he surely must be, to have dragged them 
down to this. 

" Annie's told me a lot about you,'' said Mrs. 
Dexter, " and I'm right glad to see you. She 
thinks there's nobody in the world like you. Now 
you're here, won't you sit down and take a bite to 
eat with us ? Mr. Dexter will be coming in soon, 
and I'd like to have you see him." 

The Lady of Good Cheer was anxious to see 
Mr. Dexter, but the greasy table and the unduly 
familiar relations between the bean-pot and the 
garments of the sick baby dissuaded her. 

" I am afraid they are expecting me at home," 
she said. " I must be going." 

" We aren't rich, and can't give you a fine din- 
ner, but you aren't too proud to sit down with poor 
folks like us, are you? " said Mrs. Dexter, flushing 
a little and looking at her suspiciously. 

The Lady of Good Cheer was exceedingly anx- 
ious to win her confidence and saw she had made a 
false step. 

" Indeed I'm not," she said, " and I should like 
above all things to meet Mr. Dexter. If it's not 
too much trouble, I'll stay and I can send word to 
the church that I'll be delayed." 

" That's fine now," said Mrs. Dexter, a pleased 
smile at once banishing the suspicion and wounded 
pride from her face. " Here comes Hughey, and 



A STRANGE DISCIPLINARIAN 215 

Mr. Dexter will be in in a minute. If you get a 
chance, see if you can't get Mr. Dexter to go to 
work. He's an A-one engineer, and can make big 
money, but he had a row with the Union, and now 
I can't get him even to try for a job. If it wasn't 
for Hughey, who's driving for Hecker's mills over 
there, we'd all starve. It isn't much he brings in, 
but it's enough to keep us in beans." 

Was this the explanation — a row with the 
Union? The Lady of Good Cheer became more 
anxious than ever to see Mr. Dexter. Just then 
there was a step in the hall and the door opened. 

" Here he is ! " said Mrs. Dexter, and then to 
her husband, *' This is the lady from the mission 
that Katy is always talking about, and she's going 
to stay to supper." 

Mr. Dexter was a tall man with a good figure. 
He was dressed in a black suit which was thread- 
bare but scrupulously neat, and his collar was 
white. His dark hair was streaked with grey. 
As the Lady of Good Cheer noticed his high fore- 
head, his brown eyes set deep under heavy brows, 
his straight nose and full firm chin, and she set 
aside at once the hypothesis of the hopeless drunk- 
ard. His mouth was covered by a heavy black 
moustache, but his features showed not only intelli- 
gence, but self-command and firm determination. 
He looked at the Lady of Good Cheer, and then 
gave a rapid glance about the room. A frown 
darkened his face, as his eyes finally rested on the 



2i6 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

dishevelled costume of his wife. In one swift look 
he surveyed her from her tangled yellow locks to 
her bare soiled feet. 

" I should think you could have fixed things up 
a bit before asking a lady to supper," he said 
sternly. 

" Oh, she isn't proud," said Mrs. Dexter. " She 
isn't ashamed to sit down with poor folks. He's 
always like that," she went on to the Lady of Good 
Cheer. *' He's always finding fault with the house 
in some way. But so long as he isn't working, I 
don't see what I can do about it." 

He looked at her a moment with stern, cold 
eyes, and seemed about to speak; then he turned 
to the Lady of Good Cheer. 

*' Well, I'm glad you've come, anyway," he said, 
" and I'm sorry we have nothing better to offer 
you." 

They sat down and Mrs. Dexter heaped the 
soiled plate In front of the Lady of Good Cheer 
with an enormous portion of the suspected beans. 
It was a trying ordeal. The Lady of Good Cheer 
toyed with her food, and conversed vigorously. 
Then, availing herself of a moment when Mrs. 
Dexter had returned to the stove and Mrs. Dexter 
had gone to the other room to get some papers to 
show her, she slid the beans dexterously from her 
plate Into a pail of refuse that stood at hand. 
Mrs. Dexter seemed a little astonlshejd and much 
pleased at her rapid consumption of her meal, and 



A STRANGE DISCIPLINARIAN 217 

begged to be allowed to fill her plate again, but 
she declined with grace and firmness. In the con- 
versation Mr. Dexter showed much intelligence. 
He was an engineer of the first grade and showed 
her the certificates of his capacity in hydraulics, 
pneumatics and electricity, as well as in the lower 
grades. She tried to discover the reason for his 
being out of work, and he told a long story of some 
unjust demand of the Union for the payment of a 
tax which he had refused. They had then " done 
him out of his job," and he had refused to pay 
his dues, with the result that he was now ruled out 
from all Union jobs in the city. 

The determined character of the man showed in 
the story. If he thought he was wronged, he 
would undoubtedly go to any length rather than 
give in, but the Lady of Good Cheer was more 
and more convinced that this was not the root of 
the difficulty. When she offered to interview cer- 
tain persons who would set him right with the 
Union, he met her proposition evasively. She 
changed the subject, and spoke of the children. 
He said that though he was a Catholic he did not 
mind having the children go to the mission. His 
wife was a Protestant and he thought they would 
get no harm from going to a meeting now and 
then. This opened up a new possibility. In the 
experience of the Lady of Good Cheer, the most 
degraded families were those in which there was a 
mixed marriage. Things usually went well enough 



2i8 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

with the married pair until the children were born, 
then there was a violent dispute as to their baptism 
and as to what church they should attend, which 
after years of bitterness usually resulted in the 
compromise that they should go to no church and 
have no religion, and after this the degeneration 
of the family life seemed to be invariable. 

Some disagreement of this sort might easily 
have occurred with such a determined man as Dex- 
ter. But the more she talked with him, the more 
she was convinced that he was too broad-minded 
to wreck his life through religious bigotry. He 
had a simple, reverent belief in God, but he showed 
much contempt for the conventional practices of 
religion. He even said he should like to have the 
children attend Sunday School. The Lady of 
Good Cheer turned away from the house more per- 
plexed than ever, deeply convinced that It was 
some strange mystery which kept this man of first 
class ability living in filth in a wretched tumble- 
down tenement among the worst hoodlums and 
brawlers of the ward. 

The Lady of Good Cheer set herself to win 
Dexter's confidence, but he was a sensitive and very 
reserved man, and she found it almost impossible 
to penetrate the barrier which he seemed to have 
raised about his thoughts and purposes. She 
knew, from the way In which he had looked about 
the room, that the filth of his home was as repul- 
sive to him as to her; and from his expression as 



A STRANGE DISCIPLINARIAN 219 

his eyes rested on his wife, she knew that it was 
not his wish that a woman with her natural attrac- 
tions should go about looking like a scarecrow or 
a beggar. And this knowledge rendered the situ- 
ation more and more inexplicable. 

It was some months later that the Lady of Good 
Cheer knocked at the door of the Dexters, and 
heard from within Mr. Dexter's voice raised in 
angry expostulation. She entered to find him 
standing indignantly over Mrs. Dexter, who was 
seated at the table and had succeeded in half 
screening a large pail of beer behind a newspaper. 
There was a moment's silence, and then Dexter 
broke out. 

" Well," he said, " you've come at a good time. 
Don't try to hide the can," he said to his wife. 
" She might just as well know right now what 
you're up to. 

" What do you think? " he went on to the Lady 
of Good Cheer. " That woman had a nice little 
house of her own and a pretty garden and every- 
thing she wanted. Her children were well 
dressed, and there wasn't a thing she asked for 
that she didn't get. But whenever my back was 
turned, in came the can. And when I came back 
from work, the house was dirty, the table littered 
up with grease and dirt, the children all covered 
with dirt, and she herself looked like a scarecrow. 
I talked to her, and lectured her. I got angry and 
scolded, and not a bit of good did it do. I tried 



220 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

everything I knew, and things only got worse, and 
at last I said : ' If you want to live like a pig, like 
a pig you shall live,' and I threw up my job and 
sold out my house and moved over here to the 
worst tenement in Rutgers Street, and here we've 
been ever since. She didn't think I meant busi- 
ness, but at last when the money was all gone, one 
day after she'd seen you, she promised to cut out 
the can, and I was going to work again; but here 
I come In and find her old friend sitting on the 
table as usual. It's no use. What can you do 
with a creature like that? " he cried, pointing at 
the ragged dishevelled woman whose fair cheeks 
had flushed a deep crimson, as she bit her red Hps 
and twisted a straggling lock of her yellow hair. 

Dexter was evidently beside himself with indig- 
nation and despair, for in all these months, the 
high-strung, sensitive man had never spoken a 
word in disparagement of his wife. 

This, then, was the mystery ! Why had she not 
suspected it before? And yet it was not an ordi- 
nary occurrence for a man who had all the things 
which the world seeks, to renounce them all 
and to sit down in rags with his family, in order 
to teach them a moral lesson. No wonder the 
mystery was difficult to penetrate. 

It was long before the Lady of Good Cheer left 
them that day, but before she retired she had won 
one of her great victories, and she held the articles 
of capitulation in her hands. A contest with a 



A STRANGE DISCIPLINARIAN 221 

man of such intelligence and firmness was no light 
matter. The Lady of Good Cheer sat with her 
slender form poised on the edge of a chair, leaning 
forward and clasping her hands about one knee. 
Her hat was pushed back impatiently a little from 
her high brow, and her deep-set eyes, full of com- 
prehending sympathy, were fixed upon Dexter's 
face, while she put up a plea with all the earnestness 
that was In her, that this stern, disappointed man 
should still have a little faith in his wife and make 
another trial. When she went away she had made 
a compact. She had agreed to make Mr. Dexter 
a loan which would establish him with the Union, 
and he agreed to go back to work upon the condi- 
tion that the Lady of Good Cheer should guaran- 
tee that his wife would turn over a new leaf and 
cease from drinking, and keep up the house in as 
decent a condition as could be reasonably expected. 
Dexter kept his part of the contract. It was a 
desperately hard struggle. He had offended 
some of the dignitaries in the Union, and they 
rejoiced to humble him by keeping him in line 
many months waiting for a job, and then passing 
him over when the better opportunities arrived. 
But he pocketed his pride, bitter though it was 
to him, and at last he secured a job as engineer in 
a large brewery. He moved into better quarters, 
and thanks to the frequent visits of the Lady of 
Good Cheer, there was a marked change in his 
home. But he had many back debts to pay, and 



222 BESIDE THE BOWERY. 

he would not spend a penny in fitting up his own 
home until these were all settled. 

The Lady of Good Cheer visited the family 
at frequent intervals, inspected the condition of 
the house, and applied a little tactful stimulus to 
Mrs. Dexter, whenever she discovered danger of 
a relapse. Mrs. Dexter did her utmost to stand 
well with the Lady of Good Cheer. One day, 
when the Lady of Good Cheer knew the Dexters 
had been having an especially hard time with far 
too little food, Annie appeared at the church with 
a large tin can. She came up slowly to the Lady 
of Good Cheer, a tiny figure wrapped in an old 
shawl, which concealed the deficiencies in her dress. 
Her head drooped, and she looked up sideways 
out of the corner of her eyes. 

" Me Mommer sent you this,'* she said. " Me 
cousin from Long Island brought them over to us, 
and me Mommer said I was to take them all up 
to you." 

The Lady of Good Cheer opened the pail and 
saw that it was filled with fine, fat frog's legs. 
She was deeply touched by this self-sacrificing act 
on the part of the Dexters, this wish to hand over 
to her a bit of choice food when they were on the 
edge of starvation. She answered with feeling. 

" Thank you, ever so much, Annie. I don't 
know when I've had a gift that I appreciated 
more, but I can't take them all. I'll take out 
some and send the rest back for you to eat." 



A STRANGE DISCIPLINARIAN 223 

'' Oh, never mind! " said Annie, looking up In 
some alarm, " me Mommer said they might pizen 
us!" 

Month after month passed, and lengthened into 
years. Gertrude had grown Into a charming 
maiden of fifteen, full of life and of the love of 
pleasure, natural to her age and sex. But the old 
regime continued. She still wore an old thread- 
bare gown, and It was still her lot to tend the baby, 
a new one now, all day. Her mother even at her 
best was never an active housewife, and most of 
the hard cleaning arid washing and scrubbing fell 
upon Gertrude. If she had been permitted to go 
out for a little fun after her work was finished, she 
would probably have remained satisfied to slave; 
but after cruel drudgery to be turned out In the 
street In a soiled old dress with a huge howling 
burden to carry about wherever she went was a 
trying lot for a girl who was gradually beginning 
to realise that she was beautiful enough to com- 
mand the attention of every man In the block. 
There are limits beyond which the flexible nature 
of a girl, beautiful, high-tempered, and full of the 
passion of life, cannot be bent; and so it came 
about that after the baby was put to bed In the 
evening, Gertrude often slipped away, and It was 
sometimes late before she returned. Her father 
was on night work at the time. Mrs. Dexter 
never dared to tell her husband of Gertrude's es- 
capades, and the girl was a silent child who never 



224 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

spoke of what concerned her alone. Her mother 
could not extract a syllable as to where she had 
been. Dexter was working night and day in the 
effort to pay off his debts, and the hard labour left 
its traces upon his health. During those days of 
hunger and destitution in the filth of Rutgers 
Street, the White Death, the terrible scourge of 
the tenements, had laid its hand upon him. 
Every day he came back paler and thinner, a dry 
cough shook him, and his temper became more and 
more uncertain. 

One night Dexter returned unexpectedly from 
work at ten oVlock. Gertrude was out, and he 
gradually drew from the frightened mother the 
story of the past months. He had come back 
from work exhausted, but as he grasped the truth, 
a tide of furious indignation swept through him. 
His hollow eyes flashed unpleasantly, and a spot 
of colour showed on his haggard cheek. He 
tramped restlessly up and down the bare wooden 
floor of the kitchen, biting his moustache and 
awaiting the girl's return, while his wife sat by 
tearful and dishevelled, trying, to disarm his 
wrath by occasional ejaculations. It was nearly 
midnight, when they heard a light foot-fall on the 
stair, the door was thrown open and Gertrude 
stood before them, looking very pretty in the long, 
red cloak that was flung over her shoulders. 
Her delicate cheeks were glowing, and her long- 
lashed eyes flashed with excitement. She stopped 



A STRANGE DISCIPLINARIAN 225 

in sudden terror as she saw her father. She 
turned white and shrank back In dismay. 

"Where have you been?'' said her father in 
low, stern tones. 

• His face was ghastly white now, and his eyes 
flamed with a dangerous light. She stood in 
silence, and slowly the little head she had held so 
haughtily with the piquant nose in air, sunk down 
upon her breast. 

" Come, girl, tell me where youVe been ! *' 

The low tones of his voice cut like a whip and 
still she made no answer. He sprang forward, 
and seized her by the wrist, and with a sudden 
jerk dragged her cloak from her. Then he 
stepped back in wrath and disgust. She wore the 
garments used by the girls who dance in the low 
Bowery dives. Sudden uncontrollable anger 
flamed in his brain. While he was seeking to re- 
store his home and his name to honour, this girl, 
his child, was disgracing herself and him in the 
lowest haunts of the city. 

" You vile hussy,'' he cried. " You've no 
shame In you! You ought to be kicked out into 
the street, but I'll teach you a lesson that you'll 
never forget." 

The heavy teamster's whip that his son used in 
driving the great cart horses for the mills was 
leaning in the corner. Dexter seized It with a 
nervous clutch. He strode forward and caught 
the girl again by the wrists. 



226 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

" We'll see if we can't take a little of the 
shamelessness out of that pretty skin of yours," 
he said. " Td sooner see you dead than have you 
go on like this. Tom, my daughter! You're 
worse than the vilest dog in the streets, and I'll 
show you how I treat such as you." 

He raised the heavy whip, but now the girl 
faced him. Her head was up. The violet eyes 
flashed with indignation, and her cheeks were 
scarlet with anger. With a sudden twist of his 
wiry arm, he threw her down, and the lash de- 
scended. At first she lay silent under the blows, 
biting her soft lip till it bled, then a low moan 
escaped her and then a scream. Still the blows 
fell, and it was not till she lay, white and half 
unconscious that he desisted. 

" There," he said, beginning to feel some con- 
punction. " That'll teach you a lesson. From 
now on I mean you to be a decent girl." 

He left the mother to care for her and put her 
to bed. But Gertrude was silent, and there was 
a strained, far-away look in her eyes. She made 
no response to her mother's awkward caresses. 

When they looked for her in the morning, she 
was gone. They searched the house ; they visited 
the neighbours; they patrolled the Bowery; they 
notified the Police — but they never found her 
again. To the Lady of Good Cheer, it was a 
terrible blow, and she never ceased to feel the 
sadness and horror of it. Often she would stop 



A STRANGE DISCIPLINARIAN 227 

in her work to wonder what had become of this 
beautiful child, who in the midst of her drudgery 
had sought a little of that pleasure which is the 
rightful portion of every girl, and who had sunk 
suddenly out of sight in the black bottomless whirl- 
pool of the great city's life, without so much as a 
ripple to mark where she had disappeared. 

Dexter never recovered from the blow. At 
last his debts were paid. His house was pleasant 
and comfortable once more. His faith in his wife 
had not been misplaced. Thanks to the Lady of 
Good Cheer the long terrible struggle had not 
been in vain. For it had been her faith that had 
kept his wife from sinking back Into the old slough, 
and that had nerved him through all the days 
of bitter toil, when he had felt almost too weak 
to stand. He had won, — but he had lost his 
child. 

Many months later the minister was stand- 
ing on the corner of 59th Street waiting for a car, 
when a tall graceful lady accosted him. She was 
stylishly dressed, and there was something 
strangely familiar in the piquant little nose and 
violet eyes that looked out at him from under the 
shadow of the large plumed hat. 

" Don't you know me?" she asked. 

It came over him suddenly. 

" Gertrude Dexter! " he cried. " Where have 
you been, and what are you doing now? " 

" Oh, I'm all right," she said. " I'm married 



228 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

to a fine man, and we live uptown in our own lit- 
tle apartment, and I'm as happy as can be." 

" Tell me where you are," he said. " Your 
father and mother are broken-hearted for loss of 
you." 

She tapped her dainty high-heeled shoe with 
her parasol nervously. 

*' No," she said, '' I never want to see them or 
hear of them again," and she turned swiftly and 
was lost in the crowd. 



XXII 

THE CURRICULUM OF CITY LIFE 

"Was little Peter Mercer In the yard with the 
boys this afternoon?'' asked the Lady of Good 
Cheer of the sexton. It was the boys' afternoon 
in the church yard, which had been turned into 
an extempore gymnasium, and quite a horde of 
them had just departed after performing a va- 
riety of bewildering antics on the swings and tra- 
peze and bars. 

"Peter Mercer?'' said the sexton. "I'm not 
sure as I'm onto his shape. There was enough 
of them Hamilton Street kids here. Say, them 
little jiggers Is somethin' fierce. One o' them 
little angels o' yours made me laugh till I near 
split. Like as not it was Peter." 

He pushed his hat back on his brow, and 
scratched his head as a suppressed grin spread 
slowly from ear to ear. 

"Why, what did he do?" asked the Lady of 
Good Cheer. " He's a dear little fellow, If It 
was Peter, but he is rather funny." 

" Sure he's a dear, all right," said the sexton, 
the grin spreading a little, " one o' these here 
mamma's-darlln', Sunday-School angels, ain't 
he?" 

229 



230 BESIDE THE BOWERY. 

The Lady of Good Cheer smiled. "Well, 
not exactly that, but I think the world of Peter. 
What did he do?'' 

" It ain't what he did, so much as what he 
didn't do, and what he said," answered the sex- 
ton. 

When she asked her first question, the Lady of 
Good Cheer had her hand on the door, just ready 
to spring out to her work, her slender figure was 
alive with energy and her lips were compressed 
with the determination to get through her twenty 
calls that afternoon late as it was. But some- 
thing about the twinkle in the sexton's eye de- 
tained her. She let the door swing to, and faced 
around. 

" What was it? What did he say? " she asked 
with some curiosity. 

" If I was to tell you all the things them Ham- 
ilton kids says in the yard of an afternoon, I'd 
get the sack for sure," he said. 

" Oh, I know them well enough. You needn't 
be afraid of me," said the Lady of Good Cheer. 

" Well," said the sexton, '* I was goin' through 
the yard with a hod o' bricks, that the minister 
wanted up in the pulpit for one o' these object talks 
he's a going to give. And one o' them little kids 
comes runnin' up with his bare feet, — a little kid 
about eight years old, he was, — and he says, * Say, 
Mr. Rainey, whatcher goin' ter do wid them 
bricks. Goin' ter build a new church? ' .Well, I 



CURRICULUM OF CITY LIFE 231 

turns round a bit to look at him, and when I turns 
a brick on top o' the hod slips off, and by bad luck 
it fell down right on the little kid's bare toe. It 
ain't no joke to have a sharp brick fall on your 
toe even when you have a boot on, an' thinks I, 

* I've paralysed the kid for sure this time,' and I 
was fer runnin' in to get the nurse to come and 
hold his hand, an' ' wipe away them tears,' as the 
sayin' is, but the little kid he picks up his toe all 
bloody from the brick in one hand, and comes 
hoppin' up on one foot, an' he give me such a 
look, — like I was made o' dirt, — an' says he : 

* You'd make a hell of a hod carrier, you would 1 ' 
Laugh! well say, it near killed me, but I didn't 
want to laugh out loud at the kid, so I near bust. 
He's got sand, all right. No one is goin' to be 
pityin' him. It's me that's deservin' his pity fer 
me ignorance ! " 

The Lady of Good Cheer threw back her head 
and laughed lightly with an appreciation of the 
scene which her mental image of little Peter only 
made more delicious. " It surely was Peter," she 
said. " That's just the kind of boy he is. I 
must run down and see his father. It is time now 
for him to come home from work." 

A few minutes later she was climbing the top 
flight of stairs in a crowded Hamilton Street tene- 
ment. The door of one apartment at the back 
was open, and within she could see a man down 
on his knees energetically scrubbing the floor while 



232 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

a sauce pan simmered on the stove. What 
seemed an unlimited supply of children were hud- 
dled about in various corners, leaving the man a 
free sweep of the floor. He rose as she entered. 
He was a slim, wiry Cockney with a thin bronzed 
face, smooth shaven, with black hair and dark 
eyes. He looked more like a waiter in some up- 
town club than a fourth ward workingman. He 
was in his shirt sleeves and his arms were bared 
and deep in soap suds. 

" Beg pardon. Mum, for looking like I do," he 
said. " But I'm just 'ome from work and I 
'aven't 'ad no time to put the 'ouse to rights. 
IVe just started in to scrub up and get the supper, 
and I 'aven't 'ad no chance to wash the children. 
Look at 'em! They'll be the death of me. 
What do you think that boy has been up to now? " 

He pointed to a small boy of about eight whose 
anatomy was concealed In a pair of trousers of 
truly gigantic proportions. The Lady of Good 
Cheer saw at once that the father had cut off a 
few feet of his own trousers and arrayed his son 
therein. They came up nearly to his shoulders, and 
his little brown feet protruded from their ragged 
bottoms. His face was thin and old. There 
was a weird expression In the wizened little coun- 
tenance with Its funny wrinkles around the mouth. 
But if the face seemed old it was not reposeful. 
A pair of narrow black eyes sharp as those of a 
ferret, were looking at the Lady of Good Cheer 



CURRICULUM OF CITY LIFE 233 

from beneath a puckered little brow, with such 
intense Inquisltiveness that she looked away with 
an uncomfortable feeling. It was as if some un- 
canny sprite had taken possession of the little 
body, and were waiting its chance to entrap her 
and laugh at her behind her back. 

The destiny of the family was hanging in the 
balance, and she knew that this little imp might 
easily precipitate It Into Irremediable ruin. He 
had a right to his eccentricities, for he was that 
much suspected and maligned person, " the son of 
a sea-cook." When the Lady of Good Cheer 
first knew him, Mercer was cook on a steamer. 
At that time he assumed little responsibility for 
his family beyond turning over a small portion of 
his pay to his wife when he returned from his 
cruises. The rest he expended on the alcoholic 
stimulus which he felt to be essential in preserving 
an optimistic outlook on life. The sudden death 
of his wife had given the Lady of Good Cheer 
an opportunity to converse with him as to the re- 
sponsibilities of a father, and the necessity of 
turning over a new leaf. He responded heartily, 
by being ashamed of his past behaviour and quite 
overwhelmed at the thought of the five helpless 
urchins who owed their existence to him; and he 
promised to realise as far as possible such hazy 
ideals of the Pater Famllias as hovered In his 
mind. He gave up his position at once, and got 
a place In the fish market, so that he could return 



234 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

to the children every evening. He cooked their 
breakfast every morning, left them something to 
eat, and went off to work hard all day. He re- 
turned at six, scrubbed up the house, got the sup- 
per, washed the children, mended their clothes 
and performed the various duties of an efficient 
housewife. The house was as neat and clean as a 
ship's deck, and he had kept everything in such 
fine shape that the Lady of Good Cheer rejoiced 
every time she called. It seemed almost too good 
to last. For a man to work hard all day and 
then to do the housework for a family of five 
children seemed almost too great a strain for the 
masculine mind. Certainly Mercer would have 
fallen from grace long before but for the visits 
of the Lady of Good Cheer. When a man plays 
the martyr so consistently, he requires some audi- 
ence to applaud and appreciate, and the continued 
friendship and enthusiastic approval of the Lady 
of Good Cheer had been enough so far to nerve 
him to his task. The approval even of one per- 
son means much, and if our vast centres of popula- 
tion could ever be organised so that each stray 
individual would have one friend vitally inter- 
ested in his success and progress, the frightful de- 
generation which is the result of the present condi- 
tions of social isolation might be successfully 
checked. 

"What is the matter now?'* asked the Lady 
of Good Cheer, taking her stand on an island in 



CURRICULUM OF CITY LIFE 235 

the swimming floor and surveying him with a 
sympathetic glance of humorous despair. 

" I don't know what to do with the kids," said 
Mercer, shaking the suds from his hands In a ges- 
ture of despondency. " First I locked them in 
when I went to work in the morning, and let them 
out at night when I got back. And then I read 
as how a tenement near by here was burnt up, an' 
I thought It would never do to lock them up like 
that. Mamie there Is twelve now, an' she'd orter 
be able to look after 'em, so this mornin' I told 
her to mind the house and not let any one In. But 
what does the girl do but run off to talk with some 
of the loafers on the street? When she was gone, 
Peter didn't stay long cooped up, you can bet ! 

*' I was down to the docks lookin' up some fish 
as was comin' In, an' I 'eard some kind of a row 
goln' on, an' found a big crowd down on one o' 
the wharves, sayin' as 'ow a 'orse fell off into the 
river. They couldn't find 'im or get 'im out, an' 
I 'eard 'em callin', * Go it little 'un, that's the 
stuff ! ' an' I saw a little kid had chucked off 'Is 
coat an' was divin' in right under the wharf. 
Pretty soon out he comes with the end of a line. 
* 'Ere he Is I ' he says. * Pull on this I ' an' 
by — savin' your prisence, — It was Peter ! The 
current 'ad carried the 'orse down under the wharf 
an' there he stuck, an' Peter goes divin' in like a 
little rat an' gets the rein. An' they pulled the 
'orse out with him sittin' on Its 'ead. Well, I 



i236 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

didn't know whether to give 'im a thrashin' or 
what, but the crowd give 'Im a big cheer, an' 
some one says : ' The kid should git a medal 
fer life savin' ! ' * Sure,' says another, * he 
saved a horse, an' most o' them 'eroes don't save 
nothin' but a blamed ass ! ' I'm not sayin' It 
wasn't plucky, but what can a man do with a house- 
ful o' kids like that? LIvIn' In this 'ere city. It 
seems like they grow old so fast while yer back's 
turned, that ye don't know whether you'll find 'em 
heroes or jailbirds." 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 



" The families in this house is all Sheenies and 
Eyetallans, all but one, and they, — well, they're 
Irish Jews ! " said the housekeeper with a furtive 
grin. 

*' Irish Jews ! '' exclaimed the Lady of Good 
Cheer, " that is something new in the ward. I've 
met Japanese and Russians, and Finns and Letts 
and Lithuanians and Greeks, but I've never seen 
an Irish Jew." 

" It's a bit like mixin' water and oil, ain't it? " 
responded the janitor. " They say Pat Moriarty, 
the feller that cut up such a row in the ward and 
was mixed up in the stabbing affair over to Tim 
Flannery's, — well, they say Pat says to his wife 
one day, says he, * When I kick up me heels, mind 
you take and bury me over to the Sheeny Ceme- 
tury in Chatham Square.' An' says she, rollin' 
her eyes in horror : * What for would I be puttin' 
the bones of a good Irishman from County Cork 
among all them Jews ? ' An' says he, wid a 
twinkle in his eye, ^ Put me there, Kate ; put me 
there. Sure, 'tis the last place the divil will be 
lookin' for me.' " 

The tale was one in which the ward delighted, 
and the grin on the janitor's countenance was so 
irresistible that the Lady of Good Cheer laughed 

239 



240 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

as spontaneously as if the denouement had been 
unexpected. No strangers who saw her in her 
trim winter suit of soft brown, that harmonised so 
delightfully with the tint of her hair and gave 
such an air of youth to her energetic figure, would 
have suspected her of being anything akin to that 
highly virtuous but occasionally unpopular slum 
angel, the " missionary lady." Generations of 
Puritan ancestors had indeed bestowed upon her 
a mouth straight and firm, an aquiline nose and a 
strong chin not to be trifled with. These deter- 
mined features were forgotten however, because 
of her eyes, — eyes which Botticelli might have 
painted in some St. Elizabeth who had seen much 
of life's struggle and pondered long on human 
weakness, and which yet had not lost that mis- 
chievous glint that so often makes strangers kin. 
They were twinkling now as she answered the 
janitor. 

*' I imagine Pat is safe. I, for one, shan't look 
for him there, and I don't think I shall climb 
many stairs looking for a family of Irish 
Jews." 

" I'm tellin' ye straight; they're Irish Jews all 
right," said the janitor, aggrieved at her lack of 
faith, " and say," he came a step nearer and spoke 
mysteriously, " I wouldn't wonder if they had 
some reason for dodging the divil. There's 
somethin' mighty queer about 'em. The man's 
a cock-eyed little bantam, and I'll bet me hat he 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 241 

ain't on the level. He hits the pipe or plays the 
ponies or tips off some gang o' crooks, — you take 
it from me, he's up to something. Go up and 
see fer yourself. They've got a lot o' kids fer 
your Sunday School. They're on the third floor, 
front, left." 

The lady was anxious to learn if such an in- 
credible compound of nation and creed had in 
truth been precipitated in this strange laboratory 
of human nature. She set off at once with swift 
steps to explore. She had been standing in the 
dark hall of the front house while she conversed 
with the janitor, who was going through certain 
motions which would lead the world to suppose he 
was scrubbing down the stairs. She went out the 
back door, crossed the narrow stone-paved court, 
and began to run lightly up the worn steps of the 
rear house, whistling a snatch of song as she went. 
She knocked at the door indicated by the janitor, 
and a voice called " Come in ! " It was an unusu- 
ally sweet and pleasant voice, very different from 
the strident and raucous tones of foreign accent 
that usually saluted the ears in the fourth ward, 
and she was at once Interested in its owner. She 
opened the door upon the usual two-room apart- 
ment, with its bare floors, stove, kitchen table, a 
few wooden chairs, and, in the room beyond, a 
bed. There was little enough, but it is surprising 
out of what rudimentary materials the hand of 
genius can create a home. It was evident that 



242 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

such a hand was here. Even without the cleverly 
arranged flowers and coloured prints, the room 
with its smooth white floors and shining table and 
gleaming dishes was bright enough in itself, a true 
little temple of the Lares and Penates, upon whose 
black polished altar, the kitchen stove, the fire was 
always burning and a sweet incense ascending to 
the nostrils of gods and men. 

In the room were two little girls of ten and 
twelve. The elder had a thin, elfish face and 
sharp little eyes that peered out under a tangle 
of dark hair. Her features were regular and 
delicate, and showed possibilities of beauty. The 
other girl had a typical Irish face, blue eyes and 
brown hair, a little snub nose, a saucy mouth and 
a dimpled chin. A handsome little brown-eyed 
boy played on the floor. But the attention of the 
Lady of Good Cheer was absorbed by a woman 
who sat in the rocking-chair holding a baby in her 
arms. There was something peculiarly sweet and 
madonna-like in her features and attitude. Her 
colouring and the outline of her face suggested an 
old Murillo altar piece ; but with all its sweetness, 
there was a firmness about the delicate lips, and 
a strength in the chin that one does not find in 
the Spanish master. The eyes, too, belonged 
to a different school. Large and lustrous, now 
grey and now blue in the changing light, they 
seemed to render the whole face strangely lumi- 
nous. 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 243 

" I came to ask if you would like to send your 
children to Sunday School, Mrs. Donovan," said 
the Lady of Good Cheer, after the preliminaries 
of greeting. 

" I don't know. You'll have to asK my hus- 
band, tie was bound Annie and Sallie should go 
to the parochial school. I'd as soon they'd go to 
the public school myself. I was brought up a 
Jewess, you see, but my husband's a Catholic, and 
when he was married I told him he could send the 
children to the Catholic School. And now he's 
got his way, manlike, he don't seem to like it," she 
went on, her face lighting up with a smile. It 
was not that familiar, cynical smile of the wife, 
but rather the tolerant and sympathetic smile of 
the mother. Here, then, was the explanation of 
that anomaly, the Irish Jew. An Irishman had 
defied the traditions of his church and family, and 
had married a Jewess. But this apparently was 
not all. The Lady of Good Cheer was conscious 
of some further mystery in the background as Mrs. 
Donovan continued. 

" He says the girls don't learn a thing. He'd 
be pitching into the sisters and priests from morn- 
ing to night, if I'd let him. I'm afraid he isn't 
a very good Catholic." 

The smile was gone now, and something like a 
sigh escaped her lips. 

" I should like so much to meet him and have 
a talk some day. Do you think he'd pitch into 



244 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

me?" asked the Lady of Good Cheer, with a 
smile. 

" I wish you could talk to him." Mrs. Dono- 
van had grown suddenly serious. Unsuspected 
lines of anxiety appeared in her smooth brow, 
and a mist seemed to gather over her eyes, causing 
them to change as a mountain pool changes under 
the shadow of a cloud from grey green to a greyer 
blue. She must have been damming up a great 
flood of anxiety for months, and the sympathetic 
note in the voice of the Lady of Good Cheer had 
suddenly loosed the gates. 

*' I'm so troubled about him I don't know what 
to do. I came on here hoping things would be 
better, and they're worse than ever. I don't 
know what will become of us ! I haven't a friend 
In the city! " 

The Lady of Good Cheer reached out in- 
stinctively and took her hand. 

" Can I help any?" she asked. "Won't you 
tell me about it? " 

Her eyes spoke more eloquently than her voice, 
and Mrs. Donovan looked into them gratefully 
a moment. Then she shook her head, and 
bravely repressed the tears, and said: "No, I 
can't tell you. You must ask him. He'll be hon- 
est with you, I know. Can't you wait? He 
ought to be coming in now." 

She spoke truly. They had waited but a few 
minutes when the door opened and Donovan ap- 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 245 

peared. Slight and delicate of form he was, but he 
had an individuality that would have drawn atten- 
tion anywhere. He gazed in surprise at the Lady 
of Good Cheer, his small round head cocked a little 
on one side, his mouth open, his parted lips reveal- 
ing his uneven and broken teeth beneath the heavy 
black moustache that drooped to conceal them. 
His eyes were pale and weak, and as he surveyed 
the Lady of Good Cheer, they twitched continually 
and shifted from side to side. But with all these 
physical disadvantages there was something very 
attractive about the little man. It was a certain 
Celtic vivacity, combined with a most unusual 
straightforwardness and directness, that gave a 
distinct charm to all he said. His hands were as 
delicate as a girl's, and evidently incapable of hard 
labour. Mrs. Donovan started to introduce him, 
but Donovan waved her aside. 

"How d'ye do, ma'am," he said. " I've seen 
you at the meeting up to the church. I've been 
in once or twice with a pal o' mine. I like to 
drop in where there's good singin'. My friend 
was scared the roof would fall in on him, it bein' 
a Protestant Church; but I'm no bigot, if I am a 
Catholic." 

" I remember seeing you, and I heard you, too," 
said the Lady of Good Cheer. " You have a 
good tenor voice. You must come regularly and 
help with the singing, If you aren't going any- 
where else." 



246 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

" No," he said with sudden fierceness, " the 
church ain't no place fer me." 

He broke off abruptly and added apologetically, 
" Not that the church ain't all right in its way, ye 
understand. But I've no use for priests and 
clergymen. We don't hit it off, as ye might say. 
I might come In now and then and hear the singin' 
though. Little Johnny likes singin' too. He 
can sing ' Sweet Peace ' as well as his dad, can't 
ye Johnny? " 

And he picked the three-year-old boy up In his 
arms and began crooning a song a line at a time, 
while the little baby voice lisped it after him in 
broken childish accent, but with remarkable ac- 
curacy of note. 

"There, now!" he said, laughing, and toss- 
ing the boy In his arms. " What do you think 
of that?" 

" He sits by the hour with that boy on his knee, 
singing the songs over and over," said his wife. 

" Johnny is going to make a singer, surely," 
said the Lady of Good Cheer. *' I wish you 
would send the children up to Sunday School, and 
we will teach them all the songs." 

" Sure, I believe in sendin' children to school," 
said Donovan. " But here In New York the 
schools ain't no good. Them two girls don't learn 
a thing. Up In Boston, where I was brought up, 
they have decent schools, and the children knew 
something; but here In New York there ain't no 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 247 

education at all. TheyVe the most ignorant lot 
I ever saw." 

" We should be glad to have your children in 
our schools, but If you are really Catholics, we 
don't want you to leave your own church," said 
the Lady of Good Cheer. 

" I'm not much of a Catholic," said Donovan. 
" 'Taln't no fault of me mother's, neither. If the 
Catholic religion could ever have percolated me 
obstinate hide, me mother would have druv it 
through with her old brogan. When I'd ask her 
to send me to the public school, she'd tell me the 
priest knew more than George Washington and 
Abraham Lincoln rolled into one. I must respect 
the priests, like I did the holy saints or Tim Loner- 
gan, the ward boss, ye know. Well, I was a wild 
young kid, and the pleasures of high thinkin' and 
pious livin', such as Father McGinnis give us at the 
parochial school, was about as tasty to me as corn- 
starch and water, when I could skip off and get a 
seat in the Nigger Heaven at the Howard, and 
I played hookey till one day me mother sent the 
priest after me. Well, when he caught me and 
began handin' out enough of this here virtuous 
talk to fill a phonograph, about me bein' an idler 
and reprobate, I got red-headed. When I get 
mad I don't know what I'm doln', and that day 
I was crazy. I called him all the names, — well, 
I tell you, I give him a reg'lar evolutionary peddy- 
gree, callin' him the son of pretty near everything 



248 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

from an angleworm down. But he didn't take no 
stock in Darwin, and perhaps I did give his an- 
sisterial tree an extra Hmb or two, like guns and 
seacooks, which them professors don't recognise 
as bein' in the straight line. 

" Anyhow, he caught hold of me, and tried to 
shut off the flow of me jeaneological reminiscences. 
The minute he put his hand to me, I went clean 
off me nut and grabbed up a stick and hit him with 
all me might and ran fer it. He come around to 
the house, and told me mother he wasn't angry 
but terrible grieved. Grieved! I didn't know 
much, but I knew that ain't no fit word to de- 
scribe a man's feelin's when he gets a crack on 
the crazy bone with the edge of a fence-rail, and 
I skipped out. Me mother gave me up entirely 
from that day. She said I was under the curse 
of God. rd insulted a priest, and no good would 
come of me. That's how me contryversy with 
the church begun, and we ain't hit it off no better 
since. The priest had it in for me and no won- 
der, and rd get mad and answer back every time 
they tackled me. So all me folks in Boston, bein' 
good Catholics, look on me with holy horror, and 
call me a renegade and a crook. But they're 
none too good themselves fer all their religion. 
'Twas they started me on the booze. The can 
was always going in our house. If they'd sent me 
to a good trade school instead of botherin' me 
with religion, I'd be all right now." 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 249 

The Lady of Good Cheer had listened, fasci- 
nated by the torrent of speech that poured forth 
from the little man, as he sat on the edge of his 
chair accentuating his words by an impetuous wave 
of his slim white hand. She broke in at this point. 

" What work do you find here in New York to 
do? " she asked. He looked at her a moment in 
silence, his head on one side like a suspicious fer- 
ret, his pale eyes twitching and shifting, his parted 
lips showing the uneven teeth. Then he seemed 
to stiffen suddenly, and with an almost savage de- 
fiance he spoke at last. 

" I'm a professional gambler, that's what I 
am ! " He flung the words out as a knight might 
have flung his gauntlet in his enemy's teeth. The 
Lady of Good Cheer suppressed a start of sur- 
prise. She realised that her future relations with 
this family depended on the way in which she re- 
ceived this challenge. 

** I don't know much about that kind of work," 
she said as calmly, as if he had stated that he was 
a professor of Biblical Archeology. " I've heard 
It criticised by people who knew little of it. What 
do you think of it yourself? Is it all right? " 

It was a confidential appeal which would have 
touched the honour of any professional man. In 
spite of her assumed nonchalance she watched him 
with almost trembling Interest. He gave her a 
puzzled look, and when he spoke his voice was 
no longer defiant. 



250 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

*' Sometimes it's honest, and some men play on 
the level." He paused a moment and then added 
sullenly: " But I don't. I'm a professional 
card cheat." 

Again he looked at her, as if he expected an 
outburst; but finding only a look of sympathetic 
interest, he went on: 

*' I know every trick in the trade. I can deal 
four aces to myself and my partners every time. 
I always play on the square with my friends, and 
they know that. Jerry would rather cut off his 
hand than do them dirty, but when any of these 
fool loafers come in trying to skin everybody, 
why, we just get up a little game, and I can carry 
off the boodle. I play the piano down to 
O'Rourke's place, you see, and I pick up a game 
or two every evening." 

*' O'Rourke's? " said the Lady of Good Cheer 
interrogatively. 

" Yes, he's got a pool room back of his saloon 
in Catherine Street, and I play the piano and jolly 
the boys a bit every evening." 

" Do you like it ? Do you want to keep on 
making money that way? " 

Mrs. Donovan let the sewing she had taken up 
drop from her hands, and looked over at her hus- 
band, while the anxious lines gathered again on 
her brow. 

" Like it? No ! " he cried. " I'm ashamed of 
myself; I want to be on the level." He jumped 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 251 

to his feet and began walking up and down the 
room with the restlessness of a caged fox. 

" What can I do with a wife and four children? 
I'm not strong enough for heavy work, and my 
eyes are too bad to do writing. I can't live hon- 
est if I try. It's no use ! '* 

There was something in the accents of those 
words, " It's no use," that told of hard effort and 
cruel disappointment. They were not the usual 
flippant excuse of the criminal who " could not 
help it." Yet the Lady of Good Cheer felt them 
to be absurd. To state that there is no way in 
which a man possessed of all his limbs and senses 
can keep his family from starvation, save by card- 
cheating, seemed ridiculous, and she challenged the 
remark at once. 

" You say it's no use trying to be honest," she 
said, " and I see you believe it. But I don't," she 
went on with a smile, " and I think down at the 
bottom you know that, when a man follows the 
right as he sees it, no matter what it costs, God 
will take care of that man. Why don't you try 
it? Certainly you can't be much worse off than 
you are now, for I know you are unhappy. No 
man is so miserable as one who is doing every day 
what he feels is wrong. And It will only grow 
harder. How will it be when that little boy grows 
up ? What will he think of his father ? Oh, Mr. 
Donovan, do give it up, and if there is anything 
I can do to help you, I'll do it." 



252 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

While she had been leading him on to speak of 
himself, her face had been to him as a dark house- 
front, with curtained windows and unknown in- 
terior, from which came only a voice. Now 
suddenly every window blazed with light. Even 
his dull twitching eye saw something of the char- 
acter within as the shutters opened. He looked 
at her a few moments in vague surprise. His 
wife watched his face intently, clasping and un- 
clasping her tense lingers and winking away the 
tears that one by one clouded her clear grey eyes. 

" Well," he said at last. " I'll try it. I be- 
lieve in God, ye understand, and I know what's 
right. I was brought up in Boston, and I'm an 
honest man at heart. It'll make my wife happy 
if I cut out the cards, — eh, Meg?" And he 
reached over and patted his wife's cheek. *' She's 
a good wife if there ever was one," he added. 

Her cheeks were still wet, but she looked up at 
the strange little man with a tender smile, that 
seemed full of sacred utterances, and she touched 
his hand shyly. 

"Oh, Jerry! I'm so glad!" she said softly, 
" and I'll help too." 

" I'll bet you, you will," he said affectionately 
throwing his arm around her. *' She's a good 
woman, and she's always stuck by me even when 
I treated her mean. Her own folks cut her off 
because she stood up for me." 

He looked at her no longer ashamed and de- 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 253 

spairing, but filled with that inflating pride which 
is the last support of many a man despised by the 
world, who knows there Is one woman still to 
whom he Is of supreme importance, and who will 
give up the whole world for his sake. And with 
a proud laugh he said : " You'll never go back 
on your old Jerry, will you?" 



II 

It was some months later that the Lady of Good 
Cheer was running up the stairway to Donovan's 
rooms with hurried and anxious steps. Donovan 
had received a summons to appear in court that 
day, and had promised to be at the church early 
in the morning to make arrangements for the 
trial, but he had not appeared. The little gam- 
bler had certainly been put to a severe test. He 
had given up his place in the poolroom and sought 
for work. There were thousands unemployed 
that winter, and he would have failed but for a 
succession of great snowstorms that clogged the 
thoroughfares and compelled the street-cleaning 
department to call for hundreds of extra men. 
Donovan volunteered, and night after night took 
his stand In the great square on East Broadway, 
his slight little figure almost Indistinguishable In 
the long line of hulking Irishmen and stout Ger- 
mans. By the light of the flaring torches he 
struggled with a huge snow shovel, trying to lift 
load after load of wet, soggy snow Into the carts 
that came along in unending lines. He was up to 
his knees In slush, and soaked through with the 
melting snow which ran up his sleeves and down 
his back. Every muscle ached with the unaccus- 
tomed toil, and many times he sank down exhausted 

254 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 255 

on the wet snow bank. The stronger men, used 
to ditch-digging and hard labour, looked at him 
in pity. 

" You ain't fit for this job, me boy. You'd 
best chuck it. Stop your diggin', or they'll be 
diggin' you a hole six feet by two in a day or so." 

But Donovan thought of the hungry mouths at 
home, and picked up his shovel. 

" Thanks, but I'll stick to me job. There's a 
way to make both ends meet without workin', but 
its debilitatin' to the moral backbone, as the snake 
said, when he began to swallow his tail," he said 
cheerily, splashing and staggering through the 
slush with his heavily loaded shovel. 

" Say, you can't heave that into the cart. Get 
along! You're in the way," said another big 
fellow. 

" I'm lookin' fer a job to lecture on Woman's 
Rights and Men's Wrongs at a hundred per, but 
till I land it, I'm goin' to stick to me snow shovel, 
you can bet ! " he answered. 

So he held his own through the long hours of 
night, and at last in the icy grey dawn he stag- 
gered home, his soaked garments frozen stiff, 
every muscle aching and his whole body exhausted. 
So it went on night after night. Hiding his grow- 
ing weakness under a mask of absurd banter, he 
drove his frail, exhausted body back to the toil, 
and kept it somehow at work by sheer force of 
will, until one day he found himself unable to rise 



256 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

from bed, his head throbbing and fever burning in 
every vein. 

" I ain't fakin\ this ain't no attack o' neuro- 
sterics," he said to the Lady of Good Cheer when 
she called, *' but you see it ain't no use. I can't 
keep up with a row of donkey engines like them 
fellers. If snow shovels was worked by the jaw, 
I'd have them big Dutchies on the run to keep up 
with me, though.'* 

Mrs. Donovan took hold during his sickness, 
and did her utmost to support the family. In the 
early mornings and evenings she scrubbed out the 
dirty floors of a big office building, till her hands 
were blistered and chapped with the hard toil and 
icy water. Her steps were slow as she made her 
way down town in the freezing grey dawn, for in 
a few weeks her little baby would be born, and 
many a time as she knelt on the cold marble floors, 
scrubbing with might and main, she thought she 
would faint from the terrible pangs of pain that 
shot through her. But she always returned to her 
husband, with some joke about her growing ac- 
quaintance with the plutocrats and her success as 
a practical muckraker in Wall Street, and hid her 
bleeding hands from his sight. She worked up to 
within a day or two of the child's birth, and then 
she too gave out, and lay helpless in her bed. 
They could not afford a doctor, and were too proud 
to be charity patients. They did not tell the Lady 
of Good Cheer of their needs, but called in a Jew- 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 257 

ish midwife who brought Mrs. Donovan safely 
through the ordeal. 

When he recovered, Donovan could find no 
work, and Mrs. Donovan was too weak to take up 
her scrubbing. It Is needless to dwell on those 
weeks of anxiety, when the cries of their hungry 
children made them nearly desperate. Many a 
basket did the Lady of Good Cheer send In to 
keep the wolf from the door. But there was that 
ever present bugbear, more persistent and vora- 
cious In modern cities than the traditional wolf, — 
the rent. Donovan counted every spare penny, 
and found himself two months behind. They had 
agreed to give the midwife three dollars, and 
when they failed to pay after repeated dunning, 
she brought suit for ten dollars. This was the 
last straw, and Donovan, who had met his dis- 
asters with so cheery a fund of banter, sank be- 
neath It. 

The Lady of Good Cheer had asked the min- 
ister to go with Donovan to the court and speak 
for him, but Donovan had not appeared at the 
church, and It was with a fear of some Impending 
disaster that she hurried up the narrow stair of 
the tenement. A feeble voice called " Come In," 
and she threw open the door and could not restrain 
a cry of amazement and horror. The pretty little 
room was a chaos of confusion and dirt. The 
chairs were overturned, broken crockery and 
smashed flower pots lay on the floor, with the 



258 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

earth strewn everywhere. Huddled in a chair, a 
pitiful figure, sat Donovan, his moustache droop- 
ing, his lips parted in a forlorn snarl, which bared 
his blackened uneven teeth. He looked like some 
hunted animal, harassed by dogs and at bay. His 
shifty eyes twitched violently, and he looked up 
in a dazed way, blinking at the Lady of Good 
Cheer. On the bed in the room beyond lay Mrs. 
Donovan, sobbing. 

" Oh, Mr. Donovan! '* she cried. '' What has 
happened! " 

He said nothing, but continued to look at her 
with dazed, twitching eyes. She went into the 
bedroom, and sat down by the sick woman, who 
lay weeping with the tiny red-faced morsel of flesh 
beside her. 

The Lady of Good Cheer took her hand gently, 
and said: "How can I help you? Don't be 
afraid to tell me all about it." 

Brokenly she told what had happened. It 
would have seemed a work of witchcraft were it 
not so common. The marvel was not that her 
husband's courage should have broken at last 
under the steady hammering of adverse fate. 
The strange thing was that the personality of the 
man with his frankness and tenderness and hu- 
mour, should have totally disappeared from its 
habitation and vanished into space, at the touch 
upon his brain of the fiery fumes of the stimulant 
to which he had turned in his despair; while in its 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 259 

place, a malicious demon, as false as it was cruel, 
had usurped his body, heaped curses and blows on 
the woman he loved best, and sought to shatter to 
pieces the pretty little home he had worked so 
hard to maintain. We may never know enough 
of personality to fathom this mystery, and yet we 
are willing to treat it as a vulgar commonplace. 
Mrs. Donovan said that for many years these 
turns had come periodically. Once in so often the 
madness seized him, and nothing could be done 
till it was over. She had been told it was hopeless 
to cure him, but he had not touched alcohol since 
giving his word to the Lady of Good Cheer until 
now. There was little time to lose. The Lady 
of Good Cheer did what she could to restore him 
to a right mind, and in some measure succeeded. 
It was, however, but a wretched, bedraggled speci- 
men of humanity that accompanied the minister to 
the court some time later. 

The Civil Court is a shade more respectable and 
agreeable than the Police Court. It seems little 
enough like America, for it is always crowded with 
Russian Jews, who with their endless petty suits 
are always working the ropes of American justice 
with the excited eagerness of children who have 
just moved into a house with an elevator, and who 
like to see the wheels go round. It was filled now 
with a vociferous group, who were clamouring 
over some suit as to their synagogue taxes, each 
side with fifteen or twenty witnesses from whom 



26o BESIDE THE BOWERY 

the very smooth young lawyers were trying to ex- 
tract some coherent statement, while the judge sat 
immovable behind the barriers on his varnished 
throne, scribbling notes and occasionally casting a 
bored glance at the contestants over his glasses. 
As soon as the last lawyer finished his eloquent 
peroration, the judge addressed a few remarks to 
a spot on the ceiling in the polite tone of a man 
who is giving his wife the same advice for the 
fiftieth time, and in a second the officers were bun- 
dling the excited litigants out of the court in a mad 
whirl of gabbling gesticulation. 

In another second the case of Rebecca Goldstein 
vs. Jerry Donovan had been called. The young 
Jew who represented the midwife, after exhibiting 
some reams of elegant phraseology recently ac- 
quired at the City College, called on half a score 
of excited Hebrew dames in shawl and scheitel to 
substantiate his statements. The judge called 
Donovan, and as he stood up bedraggled and 
shaking, his Honour eyed him over the top of his 
glasses with the misanthropic glance of one con- 
firmed in his opinion that all flesh is something 
even less intelligent than grass. 

"Anything to say for yourself?" he enquired. 

Donovan stood with twitching eyes, speechless 
for once. In his part of the worthy and injured 
father of a family, he appealed to the risibilities of 
the spectators rather than to their sympathies. 
The minister was embarrassed. He could answer 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 261 

the lawyer's arguments easily, but Donovan him- 
self was an argument before which he was helpless. 
The more earnestly he spoke, the more patent 
grew the grin with which the crowd surveyed the 
bewildered defendant. He spoke for the wife, 
told of the midwife's inadequate attentions, and 
ended with as pathetic an appeal as he could make. 

" After she had agreed on three dollars," he 
said, " she has the face to ask of this poor woman, 
who has toiled till she is sick to pay her bills, the 
sum of ten dollars, which is double the customary 
amount, as you know." 

The judge, who had apparently been absorbed 
in philosophic contemplation, suddenly came to life. 
He dropped his pencil and looked the minister full 
in the face with a withering glance of offended 
dignity. 

" As I know ! " he burst out with a sudden ex- 
plosion of wrath, that echoed through the court 
room till even the loafers asleep by the door 
looked up, — " I'm not married! How on earth 
should I know the customary prices of midwives? " 

The clerk smiled voluminously, the lawyers 
laughed, the officers burst Into a roar which the 
loafers echoed vociferously. The minister started 
to turn away in disgust, thinking the day lost, but 
the judge was at last In better humour. He 
pounded for order, and his face relaxed into a half 
smile. 

" Five dollars and costs," he said. 



262 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

This was far better than the minister had 
feared. He paid the bill and departed with 
Donovan tagging along, silent and dejected like a 
whipped dog. 

It Is needless to recapitulate the trying days that 
followed for the Lady of Good Cheer, till Dono- 
van was himself again. Wherever It came from, 
the spirit that possessed him was no more like 
Donovan than a jelly fish is like a sea urchin. In- 
stead of the straightforward, pugnacious honesty 
which was his chief characteristic, she was met by 
shifty deception and even direct lies and fits of furi- 
ous temper alternated with deep dejection. She 
was sure, however, that the old Donovan was 
still somewhere In the universe and made her 
preparations with a sure faith In his return. By 
telling his story to a kindly employer, she secured 
a position for him as porter in a large dry-goods 
store, and when the real Donovan returned once 
more, he entered upon his new job with enthusiasm. 



Ill 

'* Can't you find some clothes up to the church 
to fit out this fellow here? " said Donovan to the 
Lady of Good Cheer. She had dropped into his 
house at supper time, and to her amazement found 
a stranger, an exceedingly ragged young man, 
seated at the table between Mrs. Donovan and 
Annie. There was nothing left of his boots but 
a few pieces of leather and his ragged, dirty coat 
was buttoned to the throat to conceal the lack of 
a shirt. He was over six feet tall and his trou- 
sers, even at their best, were totally inadequate to 
cover his spacious outlines. They came but little 
below the knee, and his strenuous but futile efforts 
to increase their circumference in the equatorial 
zone had resulted only in gaping disaster. His 
face was covered with stubbk, and his brow and 
neck with a long tangle of black hair, but beneath 
this guise it was possible to discern a frank manly 
face. 

" I stopped in to see the boys at O'Rourke's," 
went on Donovan, " and I found him sittin' in the 
back room. It was rainin', and he'd come in to 
get dry. He hadn't a cent to buy drink, and he 
ain't a drinkin' man, anyway. He hadn't had a 
bite to eat all day, and hadn't located no place 
where he could sleep, — not so much as an old bar- 

263 



264 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

rel. I see he was a decent young feller, and I 
says: * Come along, Tom, me boy; come up to 
my house, and I'll give you a bite to eat and a 
place to sleep till ye land a job. I know what hard 
luck is meself.' He's got a fine bass voice, and 
if you'll fit him out, I'll bring him up to the Men's 
Club to sing in the quartette." 

The Lady of Good Cheer was somewhat non- 
plussed by this announcement. Donovan was 
hardly in a position to be supplying stray men with 
board and lodging. He had made a desperate 
effort to fill efficiently the position she had found 
for him, but in an institution which affords such 
diversities of employment as the modern depart- 
ment store, there seemed to be no hole of oppor- 
tunity adjusted to fit a peg of such eccentric shape. 
He could not handle heavy cases, and they set him 
to clean windows ; but when he was once balanced 
in the air outside a fifth story window, his brains 
were reduced to such a vertiginous state that he 
had to be pulled in. Inability to perform delicate 
gymnastics on a narrow ledge sixty feet above a 
stone pavement is not necessarily proof of moral 
obliquity or even of industrial incapacity, and 
Donovan might have escaped a discharge, but for 
the fact that he was handicapped still farther by 
an inherent inability to restrain unuttered any 
thought generated by his highly effervescent brain 
cells. Dante applied the heaviest kind of punish- 
ment to the most consummate hypocrite, but in 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 265 

common experience the man of perfect frankness 
Is the one who receives it. It chanced that one of 
the floor-walkers, who belonged to the church, 
failed to recognise Donovan, who supposed that 
this was an intentional slight put upon him because 
of his prior occupation, and it roused his sensitive 
soul to such a pitch of indignant fury that when 
he was summoned and reprimanded for his delin- 
quency in reference to the windows, he burst forth 
into a truly Demosthenic denunciation of depart- 
ment stores and all their retainers; and the man- 
agers, who were not interested in vivid language 
and highly coloured metaphors, promptly dis- 
charged him. During the period of desperate 
struggle that followed, he regretted his words, of 
course, but it seemed to him that the managers 
should have understood that it was " just Jerry 
Donovan shootin' off his mouth, and no harm 
meant." At last, by his own effort, he secured a 
place In a stable in Cherry Street, — not an artistic, 
aseptic, highly polished stable with brass mount- 
ings and hand-embroidered horse-blankets, but a 
dark, noisome place, Augean In its accumulation 
of dirt and debris, and located In an ancient build- 
ing which had long lost its beauty and moral char- 
acter and which appeared thoroughly decrepit and 
intoxicated. 

The dark jaws of this dank, disreputable edifice 
swallowed up Jerry every day from six A. M. until 
nine p. M., so that he saw but little of the sun. 



266 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

He tolled away In the dim light In air that was 
dense with strong odours. The work, though not 
unusually hard, was a Herculean task for Dono- 
van's weak muscles, and when It was over he 
might be found sitting on a heap of straw and 
manure In the corner, singing some new street song 
to a crowd of grinning stablemen. He kept his 
little " Salon " of the dung heap going, even when, 
after some months of confinement In such an at- 
mosphere, his health began to fall. His good 
cheer was not based on the amount of his wages, 
which seemed far from munificent to one accus- 
tomed to feel his pockets stuffed with carelessly 
crushed, crinkly bills. It barely paid the rent and 
fed the five little mouths. And lo ! here was an- 
other capacious mouth which he proposed to feed 
from the same thinly flowing Pactolean stream. 
The Lady of Good Cheer rebelled at the folly and 
sin of It, but her remonstrance died on her lips at 
his look of amazement. 

" Why, ain't that what you was talkln' about up 
to the church? " he asked; " treatin' poor folks In 
trouble as If they was your brothers, and takln' 
'em In, an' trustin' the Lord to -see ye through, 
when you're doln' the right thing by a poor cuss 
that's on his uppers? I ain't much of a Christian, 
but I want to do a bit here and there to help along, 
ye understand." 

The Lady of Good Cheer was fairly beaten, 
and retired with a quizzical smile at herself for 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 267 

actually having remonstrated with an ex-gambler 
for being too good a Christian. The immediate 
result was that Harkins, his protege, received a 
suit a little more commensurate with his superficial 
area, and was escorted by Donovan to the Men's 
Club, where he sang, " Rocked in the Cradle of 
the Deep," in a basso profundo that brought down 
the house. 

The Men's Club was nominally a Bible Class, 
but there were few things in Heaven and earth 
that were not freely discussed In the course of the 
evening. On this night some casual allusion was 
made to the dubious political Integrity of a certain 
henchman of Tammany Hall. Donovan was on 
his feet in an Instant, his head on one side, as he 
looked at his opponent out of his good eye, like a 
little bantam about to strike. " You're always 
givin' Tammany Hall the call down," he said, 
" but I want ye to understand there ain't a squarer 
man in New York City than Tom Hennessy, the 
boss of this here district. Many's the hour I've 
spent in his poolroom, and when the boys'd get 
talkin' religion, an' Td put In me oar and stick up 
fer this church, they'd all pitch on me and call me 
a turncoat and a two faced hypocrite and a black 
Protestant, and tell me to dig out or I'd get me 
face smashed. An' then Tom would speak up to 
say, * Here, you boys, let him alone ! He's got 
as good a right to bark fer his religion as you 
have.' An' he says to me, * Jerry, me boy, come 



268 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

in whenever you want. Don't mind them loony 
geezers. You're always welcome in my saloon. 
You're one o' these fellers that can't chew yer 
thoughts in quiet, and swallow down yer feelin's. 
Ye've got to spit 'em all over town, and I like ye 
fer it. Ye might have kep' yer mouth shet about 
your religion in a gang like that, but ye was bound 
ter stick up fer yer church, if they kicked yer pants 
off.' An' talk about helpin' the poor! There 
ain't a poor man in this ward 'as died without a 
cent to buy crepe rosettes fer his coffin, but Tom 
has give him a decent send off, and fixed him up 
as pretty a little funeral as if he'd been one of the 
family. An' there ain't a poor soul that's been 
put out of house and home in this ward these ten 
years, but Tom has put his hand in his pants and 
paid the rent, if they was decent deservin' folks 
and voted the straight ticket. Yes, sir, if you're 
lookin' fer real Christian gentlemen, Tom Hen- 
nessy and the minister's the two finest men in the 
world." 

At this there was an ominous groan, and the 
Republican district leader slouched out of his chair 
to his full height of six feet-three, and surveying 
the little bantam over his broken nose, shook his 
huge fist and shouted: " D'ye want ter get yer 
neck broke? If ye don't close yer face, there'll 
be somethin' comin' your way right now, see? 
The minister and Tom Hennessy! Did ever any 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 269 

one hear the like ? " He turned to the chairman, 
and continued more calmly: "I don't stand fer 
all this goo-goo talk about the corruption of Tam- 
many. YeVe got ter divvy the boodle, or you'd 
have no party. These here dude reformers is 
wreckin' the Republican Party. When a man has 
sat up mornin' and night, and worked like a horse, 
pounding the heads o' these fool Sheenies and 
Dagoes to make 'em vote the straight ticket, 
herdin' 'em to the primaries and puttin' the fear 
o' Gawd in 'em on Election Day so they won't vote 
both tickets, then, when he's turned out a solid 
Republican vote of two hundred in a district where 
there ain't no Republicans at all ter speak of, he 
goes round thinkin' they'll do the square thing by 
him, and they politely shows him the door, tellin' 
him he done It all fer the good o' the city. Do 
they suppose a poor man with a family o' kids ter 
feed is goin' ter give up his time and strength, 
workin' noon and night to hustle up a big vote, 
when all he gets fer it is a hand out o' pious talk 
on his self-sacrificin' toil? Tom Rot! Why in 
the name of mud should a man work like a nigger 
for his party. If they give all the soft jobs to the 
Democrats, and tell him to chase himself fer the 
glory of America? NIxy! The corruption o' 
Tammany's all very well fer a write up In them 
dude papers, but Tom Hennessy's a good practical 
politician, and when a man votes fer him, he sees 



270 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

him through. He's all right that away, I'll allow, 
but when you talk about Tom Hennessy and the 
minister, ye make me sick! " 

The presiding officer averted a personal conflict 
by suggesting that if the men down town had as 
much wealth and leisure as those up town, they 
might then be willing to work disinterestedly for 
the good of the city. 

This aroused Donovan again, and he sprang to 
his feet. " That's the trouble with this country! " 
he shouted. " It's an outrage a few men in Wall 
Street should have all the money In the land, when 
there are thousands of poor honest working folks, 
that can't get enough to keep their children from 
starving, no matter how hard they try! It's all 
Vv^rong ! It ain't Christian ! It ain't justice I All 
them millions they've squeezed out of the poor 
ought to be divided up ! " 

This speech awakened an enthusiastic response 
from the assembled crowd. There were some 
seventy men present. For all of them life had 
been a hard struggle. There had been a period, 
when they had given up all effort to maintain re- 
spectability. Whenever they had had money, they 
had sought to drown the despair and wretchedness 
of their lives in Intoxication. Since joining the 
club, however, they had all renounced alcohol, but 
their families still dreaded the holidays that came 
after pay day had filled their pockets. 

The presiding officer looked over their faces 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 271 

and said: "' Now honestly, suppose it was all di- 
vided, and you each got a thousand dollars what 
would happen? " 

There was a moment's pause, then one of them 
who had been long out of work, and whose family 
had suffered cruelly from hunger, said: "We'd 
all be dead or in jail inside a week! " 

Donovan's faith in Harkins, his protege, was 
not unrewarded. After living some months as 
Donovan's guest, he at last secured a good position 
and moved away. When he called a year later, 
he found his benefactor in disastrous circumstances. 
A new babe had just been born, and Donovan, 
sick with the hard labour in the stables and des- 
perately anxious, had again broken out in one of 
his old time sprees. He lost his job, and Mrs. 
Donovan was sick and despondent. Harkins, 
quite overcome at the sight of so much misery, 
excused himself and quickly withdrew. It took 
all the patience and genius of the Lady of Good 
Cheer to get Donovan straightened out again. 
She made up her mind that severe and radical 
measures were necessary to save him from himself, 
and one day he came up to the church and signed 
with great solemnity a formal lettre de cachet, 
authorising the minister or the Lady of Good 
Cheer to lock him up at once In jail at the first 
preliminary sign that he was drinking. It was a 
most effective pledge. From that day he never 
drank again. When he felt sure of himself, he 



272 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

joined the church, which he had always refused to 
do, for fear he might bring disgrace upon an in- 
stitution he respected. He got back his place at 
the stable, and as his wife was a genius at house- 
keeping and had even won a prize for making a 
dollar go further In purchasing food than any 
woman in the ward, he managed to get along with 
his increased family. The family income was 
eked out by Mrs. Donovan's scrubbing in the 
office buildings, and by the return of his oldest son, 
who had spent some years In the Reform School 
for stealing, and who now found work. It was 
strange how the family history was written In the 
faces of the children. This boy, born during the 
period of their greatest disgrace and disaster, had 
a misshapen Imp-like face, fascinatingly like that 
of a monkey. His nose was bridgeless, and his 
mouth wide, with an ever present grin. The 
three youngest girls, born In the days when hope 
had revived, were unusually beautiful children and 
had the mother's regular features and charm. 



IV 

" It's no use," said Donovan. " I can't be a 
Christian. It's no use tryin' any more." 

The Lady of Good Cheer was sitting in his 
room and had been imploring him to come back 
to the church. 

" God knows," he said, ** I want to be on the 
level, and I tried me best, but I can't see the kids 
starve. You folks can be good and do the right 
thing, but it ain't in the game f er me. There ain't 
a man on God's earth as wants to do right mor'n 
I do, but it's no go." 

His eyes twitched nervously, and he brushed 
the back of his hand across them furtively. 

" I ain't no hypocrite, anyway," he went on. 
" When I ain't livin' straight, I won't hang around 
the church and pretend I'm a good Christian. 
No, I'm a professional card cheat, that's what I 
am; and it's no use my tryin' to be no church 
deacon. I done my best, but I can't get no work 
on the level that'll keep me and the children." 

Donovan had held out bravely at his work in the 
stable. The months and years had passed, and 
from six A. M. to nine p. M. he had stuck to his 
place in the malodorous barracks in Cheri*y Street. 
Some days he was sick and could scarcely stand. 
Still he kept at it, until at last a more serious ill- 

273 



274 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

ness brought him to his bed. This time he per- 
manently lost his position. His wife did her 
utmost to help out. She took on extra scrubbing, 
and though another babe was about to be born, she 
kept to her work, coming home late in the bitter 
cold, staggering often, with her hands cracked and 
bleeding, after kneeling an hour or two on the 
stone floors in the dirty icy water. 

It chanced that Tim, the oldest boy, took just 
this time for a relapse. The few dollars he 
earned as errand boy was all applied to the rent, 
much to his disgust, for a boy likes to spend a dime 
on candy and moving-pictures now and then, and 
Tim often went hungry. A dollar left on the 
desk one day offered such irresistible possibilities 
of enjoyment that Tim's fingers could not refrain 
from seizing it. He was detected and discharged. 
His father was so furious that he dared not come 
home for three nights. 

It seemed that his efforts to do right were draw- 
ing down upon him a chain of disasters. Annie 
had grown into a pretty girl of sixteen with a 
saucy face, and flashing dark eyes under her tangle 
of brown hair. Mrs. Donovan had to scrub to 
help with the rent, and the housework fell mainly 
upon Annie, and she resented it. She had to take 
care of the baby and scrub out the house and get 
the meals. She had no time for amusement, and 
her clothes were ragged. It was not strange that 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 275 

during her parents' absence, she stole out into the 
street and hung about with the young loafers on 
the corner for a little fun. Worn out and irri- 
table with hard work, Mrs. Donovan found fault 
with her, and scolded her again and again. Now 
there was a new and changed expression in 
Annie's face. A wild, dare-devil look had come 
into her eyes. She was rebellious and taciturn, 
now giving way to furious fits of temper, now 
moody and silent, and refusing to answer every 
question. Her mother first discovered the trag- 
edy that lay behind this strange change in the girl. 
She dared not tell Donovan, and it was long be- 
fore he discovered that his daughter was disgraced 
in the eyes of the world. Donovan's affection for 
his children and his pride in them was the strongest 
force in his character, and this second blow drove 
him nearly out of his head. The girls hid from 
him in terror of their lives. Fury yielded to de- 
spair. He was at his wit's end. He was out of 
work, the children had no food. The landlord 
would wait no longer for the rent, and served him 
with a " dispossess notice." His boy was out of 
work, and in danger of arrest; his girl was dis- 
graced, and his wife was anticipating the birth of 
a child. 

Donovan did not like to borrow money, but on 
this occasion he determined to ask help from the 
church. Unfortunately both the Lady of Good 



276 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

Cheer and the minister were away. He sought 
out the minister in charge, and requested a loan 
sufficient to cover the rent. 

" He told me he had no money," said Donovan 
afterwards, " an' I see he was givin' it to me 
straight. He was broke as I was. He pulled out 
his watch and told me to put it up and take the 
cash, but I wouldn't stand fer the like o' that. A 
man that would do a minister out of his watch 
ought to light in a place five times hotter than they 
keep for gamblers and card cheats." 

He went home undecided. His wife had just 
come in white and haggard from her work. She 
looked at him inquiringly, but spoke no word of 
complaint. Little Katie, who had heard he had 
gone out for food, was not so considerate. She 
ran up, her rosy cheeks streaked with grime where 
she had tried to rub away the tears of hunger. 

" Dive Katie tum bread. Katie's hung'y," she 
said. There was not a morsel to eat in the house. 
Donovan looked around at the expectant hungry 
little faces, and saw as he glanced at his wife how 
she tried to hide her bleeding hands, and how 
bravely she was struggling to keep back the sobs. 
His eyes twitched, as he tried to blink away the 
tears. It was a topsy-turvy world, and a queer 
God to treat a man like this when all he wanted 
was to live straight and be a Christian. Then he 
shut his broken teeth together with a snap, and 
clenched his slender white hands. 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 277 

** It's no use,'' he muttered to himself. 

He got up without a word to his wife and went 
straight to the saloon to hunt up the friend of the 
poor, " the finest Christian gentleman in New 
York." 

"Tom," he said, " lend me twenty-five dollars. 
I'll pay you back in a day or two." 

" Sure, Jerry," said the great politician, " don't 
worry about it. I know you're on the square." 

He went home and paid the rent and bought 
food for the children. That night he was back 
at the saloon. He picked up a game or two of 
cards, and soon had enough to pay off his debt to 
Hennessey. 

Now there was plenty of food, and the house 
was once more well fitted up, as he redeemed all 
the articles he had put in pawn. His wife could 
stay at home and take care of her girls. She was 
no more the tired, fretful, worn-out toiler who 
drove her daughters into the street. The sweet 
spirit of motherhood shone again in her deep grey 
eyes and brooded over the house. The children 
were happy and well. All were well but Dono- 
van. In his weak, shifty eyes, that used to twinkle 
with fun even on the darkest days, there was now 
a strange, dull weariness. A shadow had fallen 
upon him. 

The Lady of Good Cheer found him thus on 
her return, and was cruelly hurt when she learned 
what had happened. She implored him to give 



278 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

up gambling, but he shook his head sadly and said : 
"What can I do? You know it's no use. I 
can't see the children starve." 

She could not answer him, for she had sought 
the city from end to end in vain for work that he 
could do. With his weak eyes that shut him out 
from reading and writing, and his frail body, in- 
capable of heavy toil, what was there he could do? 
She could not give up the hope that in some way 
the matter could be adjusted, and to-day they had 
been having a long talk over the possibilities be- 
fore him. They were interrupted by the abrupt 
entrance of a woman, a strange looking creature, 
ragged and dishevelled, hard-featured and brazen- 
faced, with swollen features and coarse lines about 
her lips. She was unspeakably dirty, and in that 
neat pretty little home she looked decidedly out 
of place. She picked up a torn dirty shawl. " I 
come back fer me shawl," she said, and went out 
without further ado. 

"Who is that woman?" asked the Lady of 
Good Cheer. 

" When I was coming home from the saloon 
last night, I found her lying in the street, drunk," 
said Donovan. " I couldn't leave her there. 
That's no place fer a senseless woman to be lyin', 
with them toughs and hoboes hangin' around. 
She may not be any too good, but that's no reason 
why I should leave her to them fellers. So I got 
her up here, and she slept here all night." 




uuuu uy <j. 11. Denison. 



HOMELESS 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 279 

"Where did she sleep? You haven't much 
extra room." 

" She slept in my bed and I slept on the floor 
in here," said Donovan simply. 

" But she's terribly dirty," said the Lady of 
Good Cheer. 

" She is that," he answered. *' It'll take my 
wife a day or two to clean out all she's left behind 
her. But what could I do ? I ain't a good man. 
I can't be a Christian like you folks up at the 
church, but I can't have a poor woman lyin' on the 
street. Suppose it was my own daughter, now? " 

Not many days after there was a knock at 
Donovan's door. At his invitation there entered 
a young gentleman arrayed in frock coat and silk 
hat, with patent leather shoes and lavender gloves, 
a most amazingly elegant figure for the fourth 
ward. Donovan looked him over with his shift- 
ing eyes for a minute or two in sheer astonishment, 
his head cocked on one side in his usual attitude of 
attention. Then suddenly he recognised him. 

" Harkins ! " he cried. 

" Sure, it's me I " said the gorgeous personage, 
with a strained smile that betrayed some conscious- 
ness of his magnificence. " Didn't ye know me? " 

Donovan rose from his seat and advanced to- 
ward him, his eyes twitching more and more rap- 
idly, more than ever like a litde bantam, as he 
looked up at the great six footer. 

" You get out of here! " he said, biting off his 



28o BESIDE THE BOWERY 

words angrily. " Do you hear me? You get out 
of here!" 

Harklns' jaw dropped. He looked down at 
the little man in consternation. 

"Why, Jerry! " he cried. "What's the mat- 
ter? I thought you'd be glad to see me! " 

" Matter ! " cried Donovan. " You're an in- 
grate ! That's what's the matter ! " 

" What do you mean? " asked Harkins. 

" Well," said Donovan, " I found you when 
you was on the outs, in a saloon, when you didn't 
have a cent, or a friend to loan you one, or a bit 
to eat, and I took you into my house when I didn't 
have any too much myself, and I fed and took 
care of you. Ain't that so? " 

" Sure it is," said Harkins. 

" Well, you went away and got a good job, and 
you come back here when I was a drinkin', and 
there was nothin' to eat in the house. You had 
plenty of money in your pocket then, didn't you? " 

" I was doing pretty well," admitted Harkins 
sheepishly. 

"Well, you come In and saw Mrs. Donovan, 
and she told you how she was fixed, an' ye could 
see It yerself with half an eye. Did you come up 
and say, * Mrs. Donovan, you was good to me 
when I was on the outs, and now I want to leave 
a fiver with you to help out a bit ' ? Not much 
you didn't! You turns on your heel, and leaves 
her and the children to starve! That's what I 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 281 

call an ingrate! And above all things on God's 
earth I hate an ingrate! Get out of my house I " 
And the little man started forward so menac- 
ingly, that the six feet of gorgeous array in front 
of him slunk out of the door, and disappeared 
swiftly down the stairs. 



Five years later Jerry Donovan and his friend 
Danny Riley boarded the Fall River boat one 
evening, on their way to Boston to visit an old 
friend. Danny Riley had been sexton of the 
church for many years, and had proved such a 
faithful assistant that the City Mission had finally 
engaged him to work among the men in the lodg- 
ing-homes. He was stockily built, and had the 
swinging hitch in his walk that is characteristic of 
the old time Bowery boy. He had a broad, hu- 
morous Celtic face, and his wide mouth had a 
tendency to creep towards his ears in a compre- 
hensive grin, whose expansive geniality was some- 
what limited by a harsh upper lip which he had 
recently revealed by shaving his sandy moustache. 
His keen blue eyes could twinkle or flash as occa- 
sion demanded with the keenness of youth, though 
his crop of sandy hair was beginning to recede 
from Its borders, and to show a few bare patches 
here and there. 

They sat down in the cabin and watched the 
motley crowd pour in, rich and poor, gay and sad, 
some gaudy, some rusty. At first the two men 
from Chatham Square felt somewhat uncomfort- 
able and out of place In this crowd of personages 
from up town. But their keen eyes soon noted 

282 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 283 

the uncertain steps and eccentric behaviour of some 
of the gentlemen who passed, and their ears de- 
tected in the boisterous tones which they overheard 
some indications that the world above Fourteenth 
Street, which superficially was so far removed 
from the Bowery, was yet in its inmost nature 
subject to the same laws, controlled by the same 
forces, and in need of the same help. 

" Say, half this gang is a bit leary eyed," said 
Danny, " and that woman with the bathtub hat 
give me the eye like one o' them Allen Street girls. 
This gang is as tough as any we've struck down in 
Doyers Street for sure.'' 

" Why don't you hold a meeting, like the ones 
you ran there in Chinatown," said Jerry. " I'll 
help with the singing, and I'll tell 'em you're on 
the level, and I know it, though I ain't a Christian 
myself." 

" I'm in for it if you are," said Dan. ** We'll 
have to ask the captain fer a permit, or they'll put 
the cop on us." 

So they rose and walked along the deck till they 
met a tall man resplendent in blue coat and gold 
braid. 

*' Say, Cap, kin we hold a gospel meeting on 
your boat to-night? " said Dan. 

The captain looked in amazement at Dan with 
his Bowery walk, his shorn lip and bullet-head, 
and at the diminutive Jerry who stood surveying 
him out of the corners of his twitching eyes, while 



284 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

an apologetic smile parted his lips, and revealed 
his uneven teeth. 

" We never have meetings on this boat," said 
the captain. " The people don't like to be both- 
ered with them." 

" Give us a show, Cap," said Dan. " You can 
come yourself, and if there's any kickin' you can 
shut us up." 

" But who are you? How do I know you can 
hold a meeting? " asked the captain. 

" I'm Lodging House Missionary of the City 
Mission," said Dan, pulling out his testimonials. 

" Try it on. Cap, and if the crowd don't like 
us and cry for more, you can tell us to chuck it 
any minute." 

" All right," said the captain. " Go ahead. 
But mind if there's any complaint, you've got to 
stop." 

" That's a go," said Dan. " Now, Jerry, get 
to work at the piano, and we'll give 'em a song or 
two." 

Jerry sat down and hammered out a plaintive 
accompaniment, and they started in on " Where 
is My Wandering Boy To-night," Jerry making 
casual excursions into the tenor whenever the air 
seemed safe in Dan's hands. A crowd soon gath- 
ered, attracted by this unusual performance, and 
Dan said, " Now let's sing something every one 
knows." They tried " Throw Out the Life 
Line," and "Nearer My God to Thee," and 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 285 

under the stimulus of Dan's genial flattery, the 
crowd to Its great amazement soon found Itself 
singing lustily. 

Dan read a few verses from the story of the 
Prodigal Son, and started In to speak: "I sup- 
pose you folks Is wonderin' what two guys like us 
Is up to, holdin' a meetin' on this here boat, so I 
may as well tell ye that I'm here to testify to the 
power of God to save and keep a man from the 
sin of drink. Thirteen years ago there wan't a 
hobo on the Bowery worse off than me. I was 
separated from my wife and child, because of the 
drink. I was good for nothin' but to hang around 
No. 9 Bowery or Barney's, wid me belly to the 
bar. You could float a good sized ship with 
the whisky I've drunk In my time. I was as bad 
a crook as any of 'em. There's no crime on the 
books I ain't been guilty of but murder. Me and 
the other 'bos hung around Chatham Square wait- 
In' fer some gazabo ter come along that was fool 
enough fer us to handle him with the knockout 
drops or the black-jack, and we'd go through his 
clothes, and blow all we got on drink. Sometimes 
I'd go down to the Battery and hire meself out 
as a greenhorn to some rube from up the State, 
and off I'd go wid him, and wait fer a chance ter 
do him dirty, and back I'd come to blow In me 
cash In Chatham Square. 

" Well, one day I'd just got out from doin' time 
fer a house-breakin' deal, and I was on me uppers 



286 BESIDE THE BOWERY 

fer fair. Td blown in all the cash I had on the 
drink, and I'd even sold me clothes and was goin' 
about in relievers, the dirtiest, raggedest outfit ye 
ever see. I met a jigger comin' along down the 
Bowery, and I struck him fer some food. * I'm 
starvin',' says I. * I ain't had nothin' to eat for 
two days.' He looks me over kind o' sharp like, 
and then he says, * Come in here, and I'll get you 
some dinner,' and he took me into Beef Steak 
John's and sat me down at the table and ordered 
a fine dinner. Well, I sat and looked at it. I 
couldn't eat so much as a mouthful. You boys 
know well enough when a man's on a spree he 
don't want no food. No more did I. All I 
wanted was the money to get a rosiner. So at 
last I had to own up to it. ' I can't eat,' says I. 
Well, he didn't get red-headed. He give me a 
little talk like a friend and then shook me hand, 
and give me a quarter. * Friend,' says he, ' come 
and see me to-morrow at twelve at the church, and 
with God's help we'll make a man of you yet.' 
Well, friends, it was that hand-shake as saved me 
life. I went to see him the next day, thinking 
I could get more money out of him, but he give 
me such a talk, that before he got through I got 
right down on me knees and made a little prayer. 
Well, friends, that was thirteen years ago, and 
from that day to this, I ain't touched a drop of the 
stufF. They got me a job tendin' furnace, and a 
poor job it was, but I stuck to it, and then they 



A CRIMINAL BY NECESSITY 287 

got me a place in McClure's woodyard. And 
after some months I got me wife and little boy 
back again, and they made me sexton at the old 
Presbyterian Church. I ain't perfect, and I have 
me faults, but there ain't a man can point the 
fingers at me and say, * Danny, you're fakin'.' 
They all know I'm on the level, and they know it's 
straight goods when I testify to the power of God 
to save and keep a man from the drink for thirteen 
years, eight months and ten days." 

As he finished, Jerry sprang up. " That's 
straight, what he's tellin' ye," he said. " I've 
known Danny Riley fer eight years, and he's never 
touched a drop of the stuff. He's on the level, 
and you can bank on all he says. I ain't a Chris- 
tian myself," he went on. " I wish to God I was. 
I tried to be, but it wasn't no use. I'm a profes- 
sional card cheat, and I work in a poolroom on the 
Bowery. I wish to God I could get out of it. 
The only happy days of me life was when I was 
tryin' to be a Christian. I was hungry and sick, 
but I was all right in me mind, and I could say 
me prayers and go to church. Now when I hear 
them old songs, it makes me feel like cryin', fer 
I know I'm crooked. But I tell you, listen to 
what Danny says and you'll be all right. There 
ain't no other kind o' life worth livin' than what 
he's tellin' ye, an' ye can't be happy no other way. 
Only ye've got to be the real thing, on the level 
and no fakin' I " 



288 



BESIDE THE BOWERY 



Danny rose again. " Now if any of you peo- 
ple has been lettin' the devil run the show fer ye, 
or if the drink's been makin' a fool o' ye, cut it 
out! Start in, right away! to-night! Fm here 
to tell you that if ye get down on yer knees and 
say, * God help me to cut out the booze ! ' if you 
mean business and no fakin', he'll surely help you 
and save you, like he did me. Only you've got 
to mean business." 

Several men who had been drinking heavily 
stopped to talk with Danny, and Jerry sat by and 
watched with eager attention, his head tilted on 
one side, his eyes moving nervously in his excite- 
ment, while his friend was drawing from the peni- 
tents a promise to amend their lives. He tried to 
smile encouragingly at Danny, but his lips trem- 
bled, and now and then he furtively drew the back 
of his hand across his half blind eyes. " I wish to 
God I could be a good man," he muttered, " but 
it's no use.'* 



THE END 



3477-3 



